


it's alive (when i see it through your eyes)

by whyyesitscar



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Trans Fabian Aramais Seacaster, adheres to the canon of sophomore year except without ayda, jawbone and tracker show up for the BRIEFEST moments, me? using fic and d&d to work through my gender issues? it's more likely than you think!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:08:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28275840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whyyesitscar/pseuds/whyyesitscar
Summary: A ball of light, floating shoulder-height (for most of them) off the ground, expands and brightens, stretching to fill the room. It touches the ceiling, pops with a sharp crack, and a person tumbles out of it. There are streaks of red as they somersault, coming to rest within Riz’s reach.They prop themselves on an elbow but wince as they try to stand. One of their wings—they havewings—opens up, coming very close to Riz’s face. The wings are a brilliant orange against the dark of the house, and Riz can’t help touching the tip of one very gently.They whip around as soon as he does. There is fire in their eyes, and static growing in Riz’s stomach.“Oh, shit,” he says, and then he disappears.//or: after their harrowing adventures in the nightmare forest, the bad kids were looking forward to a quiet, relaxing summer. those dreams are dashed when riz disappears and the adventurers must recruit a mysterious stranger to help rescue him.
Relationships: Adaine Abernant & Ayda Aguefort, Adaine Abernant & Riz Gukgak, Arthur Aguefort & Ayda Aguefort, Ayda Aguefort & Fabian Aramais Seacaster, Ayda Aguefort & Kristen Applebees, Ayda Aguefort/Figueroth Faeth, Kristen Applebees & Figueroth Faeth
Comments: 10
Kudos: 25
Collections: Dimension 20 Big Bang





	it's alive (when i see it through your eyes)

**Author's Note:**

> wow has this ever been a labor of love! this is the first big bang i've participated in and i've enjoyed it so much. it's been a blast to work on, and i have to give a huge shout out to [@fanfictionfantasies](https://fanfictionfantasies.tumblr.com); getting to see z create three wonderful pieces of art based on something i wrote is so gratifying and they're all amazing. you can see them in more detail [here](https://fanfictionfantasies.tumblr.com/post/638423248611246080/13-d20-big-bang-art-yooo-the-fanfics-and-the), [here](https://fanfictionfantasies.tumblr.com/post/638423582364532736/23-d20-big-bang-art-ill-take-any-opportunity), and [here!](https://fanfictionfantasies.tumblr.com/post/638423916724043776/33-d20-big-bang-art-ayda-aguefort-and-fabian) which i obviously highly recommend :)
> 
> title & intro lyrics from "durban skies" by bastille
> 
> please, please enjoy!

_now i understand your lives—  
_ _when you take me there,  
_ _you show me the city;  
_ _i see it through your eyes._

/

**i.**

“Let’s! Go! I came over here for a movie night and if it’s not going to happen in the next twenty minutes, I’m going home to fence with my mama.”

“Your ma _ma_ ,” Kristen teases, earning herself a slap on the shoulder from Tracker.

“Yes, Kristen, my mama. She happens to be the world’s greatest swordswoman.”

“Swords _person_ ,” Kristen corrects.

Fabian rolls his eyes so spectacularly they almost fall out of his head. “My mother is one hundred percent for sure a woman, Kristen.”

“Yeah, but if you get used to gender-inclusive language now, it’ll become second nature to say it all the time.”

Gorgug leans his head around the doorframe from the kitchen. “Hey so, not to worry anyone, just an update—popcorn might be taking longer than we thought. How’s it going out here?”

“Fabian and Kristen are discussing gender politics,” Adaine answers without looking up from her book.

“We’re _not_ ,” Fabian insists. “If we start that discussion, Kristen will never stop and then we’ll never watch Fig’s stupid movie and then I’ll have to sleep over.”

“It’s not a stupid movie!” Fig calls from the kitchen. Pots bang and clank before she emerges, a butter stain trailing from the side of her neck. “ ‘Volsquito 2: You’ll _wish_ it was magma’,” she recites dramatically. “Come on, a volcano that erupts with mosquitoes; don’t you wanna fucking fight that?”

“It’s too easy to fight. Adaine could just fly above the whole thing and dump a bunch of bug spray down the hole.”

“You think I could carry enough bug spray to douse an entire volcano?” Adaine scoffs.

“Besides,” Fig counters, “their extra-strong exoskeletons are immune to modern poisons and chemicals.”

“Mosquitoes don’t have exoskeletons,” Riz says from behind the couch, and everyone jumps about a foot in the air.

“The Ball! How long have you fucking been there?”

“I literally got here before you, Fabian; I’ve been here the whole time.”

“What? No, you absolutely haven’t,” Kristen says. “I would have noticed.”

“Babe, he dropped his watch back there like twenty minutes ago. You literally teased him about it.”

Gorgug furrows his eyebrows. “You’ve been behind the couch for twenty minutes?”

“No,” Riz retorts indignantly. “There’s a goddamn trap door back here. I fell in and I’ve spent twenty minutes trying to get back out.”

Everyone erupts into a chorus of lighthearted but still sharp jabs and jokes.

Adaine quietly slips into the kitchen to finish making the popcorn.

/

They end up watching Volsquito 2 and 3—Fabian is charmed by the surprising amount of sword-fighting and chase scenes, and Adaine and Riz are absolutely appalled at the horrendous science. Fig falls asleep first even though she tries her best not to, and one by one they all follow suit; even the TV turns itself off after an hour.

Adaine flits between sleep and trancing, but Riz can never stay asleep for too long. He wakes up suddenly after two hours, wired and on-guard for an unidentified reason.

His eyes adjust to the darkness and he sniffs a few times to clear his nose—the air smells like candy and burnt popcorn, but there’s a tang to it that wasn’t there before. If anything could smell like static, it would be this, and Riz wiggles his nose, blowing out in an attempt to clear the fuzziness.

As soon as he stops, a large clap of thunder booms and shakes the entire house. The rest of the Bad Kids jolt awake, hair matted from sleep but eyes very much alert.

“What the fuck, Riz?” Fig whispers.

“It wasn’t me!” he whispers back. “I don’t know what that was!”

“I think we should all back up,” Adaine suggests, pointing to a space a few feet behind Riz’s shoulder.

They all instinctively follow her lead as a ball of light, floating shoulder-height (for most of them) off the ground, expands and brightens, stretching to fill the room. It touches the ceiling, pops with a sharp crack, and a person tumbles out of it. There are streaks of red as they somersault, coming to rest within Riz’s reach.

They prop themselves on an elbow but wince as they try to stand. One of their wings—they have _wings_ —opens up, coming very close to Riz’s face. The wings are a brilliant orange against the dark of the house, and Riz can’t help touching the tip of one very gently.

They whip around as soon as he does. There is fire in their eyes, and static growing in Riz’s stomach.

“Oh, shit,” he says, and then he disappears.

/

He isn’t knocked out, but the next time he’s aware feels like waking up. Riz’s eyes dart around quickly, catching wisps and glimpses of his surroundings before he makes an effort to calm down. It’s not as dark here as it was in Mordred Manor, which means it’s very likely that he’s not in Elmville anymore, perhaps not even in Solace.

He takes stock of what he does have, which isn’t a lot. His briefcase is back at the house, because even Riz doesn’t sleep with everything on him. He’s in a half-attempt at pajamas: regular pants, because he forgot to change them, but a loose long-sleeved sleep shirt. No shoes, but (admittedly thin) socks. His dad’s arcubus isn’t on him but he does have his regular gun (with a limited number of bullets), plus his watch. It’s not the greatest way to be stranded, but it’s also not the worst.

Riz takes a deep breath and turns his attention to his surroundings. It’s dim, close to either dawn or dusk, though he can’t see a sun to determine which one. He’s in a mostly barren clearing—the kind of rocky, brown terrain you’d see on the edge of a forest, except Riz can’t see a forest.

What he can see, in varying distances in every direction, are walls. At least a hundred feet high, and Riz quickly takes a moment to imagine himself stacked thirty times up to the top. He shakes his head. The walls are solid rock and are definitely man-made rather than formed by nature, which sends a million questions bouncing through Riz’s mind. _Who made them what are they here for how many are there are they keeping something in or out or is it even more sinister than that…_

He shakes his head again. The closest walls to him are equidistant on either side, a little more than half a mile away. A theory starts bubbling up and Riz rolls his eyes because honestly, it would be super annoying if it were true.

In front of him is a pillar—thin but sturdy, with a ball floating two inches above the top.

Riz desperately wants to touch it.

He thinks about the events that led him to wherever he is now.

(He does not touch it.)

He does, however, pick up a rock and toss it at the ball. As soon as it makes contact, it disappears into the stone with a gentle pop.

Riz claps his hands free of dust and dirt perhaps a little louder than necessary.

“Okay!” he says to no one. “Well. Good decision, me.”

He throws another rock at it, to see if it will disappear faster, but this one clacks off of the ball and skips to the ground.

Riz looks around, hands on his hips, and walks toward the pillar. It doesn’t look any different up close—still just a ball of rock hovering above a column. People have sacrificed more in the name of science.

He spreads his fingers wide and slowly touches the surface.

Nothing happens.

“Cool, okay,” Riz exhales. “Good decision, me.”

He investigates the ground around the pillar, not that there’s that much to find. Sticks, rocks, an occasional animal footprint. The wall to his left looks marginally closer.

Riz sighs and starts jogging.

//

Mordred Manor goes from sleepy to wide fucking awake in less than a minute.

“What the _fuck?_ ” Fabian blurts.

“Shut up, Fabian; you’ll wake up everyone else,” Fig hisses.

“Yeah, I’m okay with that—your mom’s a super dope archer.”

“Come on, we can totally handle this ourselves.” Fig lights her hands up and turns toward the figure in the middle of the room. “At the very least, Gorgug could go hand-to-hand if it came down to it.”

“I dunno, we look pretty evenly matched,” Gorgug says, assessing the stranger in front of them.

“Hey, who are you?” Kristen calls loudly from the couch. “Just to speed things up.”

Their eyes look wild, Fig notices. Wild and apprehensive and paranoid, if not outright scared. Fig takes a moment to regard them—their large wings, dark skin peppered with glowing tattoos on their arms and shoulders, talons that clack on the wood floor. The bird-person in the middle of the room breathes heavily and assesses the situation right back, sizing everyone up in a matter of seconds. Fig feels incredibly seen as their gaze clocks her horns, the fire in her hands, the reddish tint to her skin.

They exhale and stand straighter, ruffling their wings and even the smaller feathers on their arms. Their eyes are fire, compact balls of flame that actually move, but clouded over. The fog seems to settle as they slowly breathe.

“Are you going to attack me,” they say.

“Should we?” Adaine immediately counters.

“There is a very high likelihood that I am more powerful than each of you individually, but even I would hesitate to engage in six-on-one combat.”

“You think you’re more powerful than us?” Fig scoffs.

They cock their head sharply, chirping as their wide eyes meet Fig’s. “You think the fire in my wings is _‘way fucking cool’_ and you’re wondering what would happen if we fought on the same side, if our powers combined.”

“Ten seconds and you’re already thinking about being allies with a firebird who just appeared in our house out of nowhere?”

“I’m not—” Fig rolls her eyes at Adaine and stamps a foot. “They’ve got fire eyes, eagle talons, and giant fucking fire-wings; am I the only person who thinks that’s cool??”

“It’s pretty cool,” Gorgug agrees. “Hey, does anyone think it’s weird that we watched two movies about volcanoes tonight and then someone showed up who looks like they might be made of lava?”

“Hot,” Kristen mutters. Tracker slaps her again.

“That’s what I’m saying!” Fig shouts.

“God, Fig, do you have to flirt with everyone?” Fabian sneers.

“I’m not flirting!”

“You’re thinking about it,” the stranger corrects.

“Yeah, only ‘cause Fabian mentioned it!” Fig protests. “Hold on, are you reading my mind?”

“It’s _Detect Thoughts_ , Fig; it’s only a second-level spell,” Adaine explains. “They’re probably a divination wizard.”

The stranger stands up fully and drops their hands. “You recognize magic?”

“I even practice it,” Adaine quips. “Is that why you thought you were more powerful than us?”

“Yes.”

“Hey, what’s your name?” Kristen interrupts again, still loud.

“Ayda.”

“How come you haven’t flown away?” Gorgug asks.

“Perhaps for the same reason you haven’t attacked me,” Ayda answers.

“Because you’re scared?” Gorgug furrows his brows. “Are you scared?”

“No.”

“Maybe you should be!” Fig shouts, inching closer to Ayda with hands that burn a little brighter than before. “‘Cause you stole our friend and now we’re gonna fight you!”

Ayda looks down at Fig and suddenly she feels like she’s sinking. “I didn’t steal your friend. You’re overcompensating,” Ayda says plainly, “for your perceived softness earlier. You don’t want to fight me.”

“Adaiiiiine,” Fig whines, “how long does that stupid spell last?”

“Probably only a few more seconds,” Adaine answers. She curls herself onto the couch and addresses Ayda. “If you didn’t steal Riz, then where’d he go?”

“I don’t know. I barely saw him for the brief time we were in the same room. By which I mean this room, if you needed any further clarification.”

“I need so much clarification,” Gorgug says. “Wait, if you’re not scared, then why are you still here?”

“I am...curious,” Ayda says cautiously. “I thought I was the only one.”

“Who used magic?” Adaine presses.

Gorgug is right behind her. “Or in general?”

It’s times like these that Fig really loves her friends, or at least is very proud of them. They’re such a unit, such a tightly knit group that Fig might as well have asked both of those questions herself (and would have, if others hadn’t gotten there first).

Ayda pauses for a long time before answering. “Both.”

The energy in the room changes instantly. It doesn’t get lighter or disperse but there’s a different charge to it, a sympathetic hum rather than a panicked static.

Tracker stands up and weaves her way out from the rest of the group. “I’ll make some coffee,” she sighs.

Ayda squawks, just a little, and Fig can’t help smiling. “You ever had coffee, Ayda?”

“No. Is it poisonous?”

Fig smiles wider.

/

After making the necessary introductions, they learn so much in the ensuing conversation that Fig stops listening. Fabian’s already fallen back asleep; Adaine is writing everything down, and Tracker and Gorgug keep floating in cups of coffee. Fig watches Ayda as she speaks and tries not to make it so obvious that she’s staring.

These are the things Ayda knows:

Ayda has lived for multiple lifetimes on a planet that’s also a huge labyrinth. She doesn’t know how she got there or who her family is, though previous notes indicate that she was placed there as a child in her first life.

She spends her time mapping the planet. It has a lot of traps and dangers, and she’s gone through at least five lives like this. She has no idea how big the planet is because she keeps dying before she can find out.

Right before she appeared in Elmville, she came across a stone pillar that she’d never seen before in this life, and that none of her previous lives had written about.

She touched the pillar and...teleported? Traveled? It was the touching that precipitated the trip to Elmville.

She doesn’t know why Riz vanished, nor does she know where he went, but a logical and highly probable guess would be that he is now on the maze planet.

(Fig was paying enough attention for that last part to be a direct quote).

Fig knows a few things about Ayda, even in the short time they’ve been acquainted. Mostly that Fig has never seen anyone who looked like her, and that also she looks really familiar.

“Are you sure you’ve never been to Elmville?” Fig blurts, interrupting Adaine’s interrogation.

“Quite sure,” Ayda replies. “You are all the first people I’ve ever seen in this life; I’m certain I would have encountered more people if I’d ever been to Elmville. Plus, its name isn’t anywhere in my notes.”

“Yeah, but your notes can be, like, wrong, right?”

Ayda pauses for a long time before answering. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?” Gorgug asks.

“My notes are all I have,” Ayda says. Her tone is clipped, words close together, as if something has tightened her throat. “They are accounts of previous versions of myself. If they’re wrong, how do I know who I am?”

“That’s—” Gorgug furrows his brows and considers the question.

Fig shrugs. “Nobody really knows who they are, you know? Things are easier once you embrace that.”

“Have you?”

Fig says yes. Five other voices shout no.

Fig rolls her eyes and stands up, stretching her arms. “I can teach you, since you’re gonna be sticking around for a while.”

“I am?”

“As long as it takes to help us find Riz, hell yeah. It’s not your fault, I know, but you are the reason he’s gone.”

Ayda nods. “That seems reasonable.”

“Yeah.” Fig looks at her some more—her dark skin, the orange runes tattooed over the length of her arms. They’re not as bright as they were when she first tumbled into the room, but Ayda’s calmed down a lot since then. It’s fascinating to see someone else whose body subtly betrays their emotional state.

Fig touches her forehead.

“Does your head hurt.” Ayda, it seems, has been paying attention, too.

“What? Oh, no,” Fig replies. “I was just thinking. You look really familiar to me.”

Ayda blinks a few times. “And yet we’ve never met. Perhaps this is a puzzle we could solve together.”

Fig sits up straighter, bends one knee and curls an arm around it. “Yeah, okay,” she smiles. “What do you know about where you came from? Or maybe your previous lives.”

“Very little,” Ayda answers, “at least in the way I assume you’re intending. I don’t know why I live on a maze-planet and I don’t know who my parents are, though I know that one of them was a phoenix.”

“Because you’re half-phoenix.”

“Precisely.”

“And probably one of your parents is a magic-user, since you’re a wizard.”

Ayda cocks her head. “An astute observation. What constitutes a wizard? And what other kind of magic-users are there?”

“A wizard is a magic user who masters their spells through education,” Adaine explains, “like me. Clerics, like Kristen, receive magic from a particular deity they follow. A sorcerer’s powers are innate, and are either self-generated or passed down through a bloodline. Bards harness the power of music and storytelling to wield magic, and warlocks make pacts with otherworldly beings.”

“Like me!” Fig interjects.

“What a wonderfully succinct and coherent explanation,” Ayda says, focused on Adaine, who smiles brightly. “Before, you identified the magic I used on Fig as a _Detect Thoughts_ spell and conjectured that I was a divination wizard. Were you able to do that because you follow the same path?”

“Yes.”

“Fascinating. I know very little about how other people wield and master magic, as I have not met anyone else in this life. However, you seem to be a very powerful and learned wizard, all the more impressive for your young age.”

Adaine sits up straighter and puts her notebook down. “Thank you!”

Ayda nods once. “Praise should always be shared when it’s earned, or so I’ve read, having never received or given any before now.”

“No one’s ever told you how cool you are?” Fig asks.

“I don’t know what that means.”

Fig cranes her head, trying to find a way to explain something that’s really subjective and not always consistent. “Cool is like...impressive and, like, something you notice that sticks with you. Cool is different in a really appealing way. Sometimes it’s something that you want to stay the way it is because it’s perfect, and sometimes it’s something that you want to try and imitate for yourself. Like, your eyes.” Fig tries her hardest not to blush or look at any of her friends. “I’ve never seen anything so bright and foggy at the same time and I kinda wish mine looked like them. They’re very cool, but not the only cool part about you.”

Ayda pauses for a _very_ long time. Her eyes never leave Fig’s but her hair flares in waves, erratically at first before eventually synchronizing with her breathing.

“My eyes are fire because I’m part-phoenix,” she explains, “and they’re cloudy because at some point over my lives, I sustained a lasting injury. I’m sure it was very traumatic at the time, though I don’t remember it firsthand anymore. I don’t know whether an injury should be “cool” or worthy of any praise, but I believe your intentions and sentiment are sincere. I’ve concluded that I should thank you.” Her tattoos glow and spark, though her expression remains the same.

Something flutters in Fig’s chest, erratic and wispy, before it dissolves into calm ripples.

“Cool,” she says, softer than she’d like given the fact that literally all of her friends are watching. “I mean, thanks. For sharing, not for thanking me, which—”

“I still haven’t done,” Ayda finishes. “Your explanation of what it means to be ‘cool’ was succinct and clear enough that I could understand immediately that your characterization of my eyes as cool was a compliment. I appreciate your candor and believe you to be a person of singular integrity.” She blinks slowly, breaking Fig’s gaze momentarily to look at everyone else. “I should disclose that I’ve never met anyone else, so to me you are all singular, and I can’t wait to discover the reasons why. Oh.” She blinks again and looks back at Fig. “Thank you.”

Fig locks eyes with Adaine—with Kristen and Fabian and Gorgug—and they silently decide to work as hard as they can to convince Ayda to stay.

“We should talk to Aguefort,” Gorgug says, breaking the tension.

Kristen scrunches her nose. “I don’t know, it always seems like he makes our lives harder even if he does know a bunch about magic.”

“No, I mean—”

“Oh my god!” Adaine blurts. “Gorgug, you’re a genius!”

“I am?”

“The phoenix!”

“Oh, yeah.” Gorgug nods wisely. “That’s what I was trying to say.”

Everyone looks at Ayda except for Fabian, who’s draped across the long couch with his arm over his eyes. “Wait, are you seriously figuring out now that Ayda is Aguefort’s daughter?” he drawls. His arm doesn’t move. “It’s so obvious.”

“You’ve been asleep the whole time!” Fig yells. “Why didn’t you say something?”

Fabian finally sits up. “Not the _whole_ time; I heard some stuff. And you were having a moment, it would have been rude to interrupt.”

Fig blushes, though her skin hides most of it. “It was just—” She turns to Ayda, whose eyes have cleared a little and are flitting between everyone, as if trying to help solve the puzzle. “We think your dad might be the principal of our school. Do you want to go talk to him?”

“Right now? It’s very dark. I don’t know the stellar map or solar cycle of this planet but I would assume that now would not be an appropriate time to talk to someone, whether they’re my father or not. Do you have something that explains what a school is; I’m learning very quickly that our planets are nothing alike and I would like to understand the mechanics of your society so that I can avoid being a further disruption while I’m here—”

“Ayda,” Adaine interrupts.

“Yes. Adaine.”

“It seems like you’re panicking a little.”

Ayda’s fingers move very quickly, each one touching her thumbs in order from pointer to pinky and back again. The tips of her wings flick involuntarily, like a cat’s ears when you get your finger close enough.

“I am—” She breathes out again; her right hand stills while her left hand keeps moving, and then they switch. “The suggestion that you might know my father is...monumental. I have not made a large discovery like that in this lifetime, perhaps even in several. It is—creating a multitude of feelings, which is confusing. I much prefer to focus on one thing at a time until I can understand every facet of it, but I don’t know what to focus on right now.” Ayda bends her neck to either side. “I am going to go outside. No one is obligated to join me.”

Adaine and Fig follow her anyway.

Ayda strides through the house and out the front door very quickly, getting four large steps into the yard before she stops. Adaine and Fig notice at different times, though both stop within arm’s reach of Ayda.

Her shoulders lift as she heaves in large breaths.

“Are you okay?” Adaine asks quietly.

Ayda doesn’t turn around. “I don’t know,” she replies. “I think someone who did know might say no, but I can’t make that same declaration.” She lifts her feet and steps a dozen times in the grass that’s just starting to gather dew. “Even presented with a large collection of evidence to the contrary, a part of me didn’t believe that I’d left my home. But this—” She curls her talons into the grass and inhales. “Knot doesn’t smell or feel anything like this.”

“Not?”

“A thing to unravel,” Ayda answers. “Labyrinth seemed too on-the-nose.”

“Oh, _knot_ ,” Fig repeats.

“Yes. Have I taught you a new word?”

Fig smiles and wishes Ayda would turn to see. “Not yet.” Adaine rolls her eyes. “Get it? Not?”

Ayda reaches behind her and pulls her wings around her shoulders for a tight, brief hug. Her hair sputters as a gentle rain begins to fall.

She turns around and Fig can see the tiniest smile starting to grow, a very faint uptick at the corners of her mouth.

“Exceedingly clever,” Ayda says. “A masterful play on words. I have a very high body temperature but I don’t know about the two of you; how long can we stay out here before you get too cold?”

“I’m part-devil,” Fig answers, “so I’m good.”

“We can fly to the roof of my tower,” Adaine suggests. “That way it’s easy for me to grab a sweater.”

Ayda perks up. “I, too, have a tower. Multiple towers, in fact. I build one for every lifetime.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” Ayda looks up, cranes her neck presumably to find Adaine’s tower. “How should we all get there?”

“I can cast Fly,” Adaine says, “but I wasted a few spells today trying to prevent my friends from getting very hurt, so I can only cast it on myself.”

“Not a problem.” Ayda holds her arms out toward Fig. “I believe I’m strong enough to carry you, if you’re okay with that.”

Fig nods and doesn’t look at Adaine for a second.

It’s too short a flight for her liking, but it’s nice to sit on the roof. The incline means they all have to kind of huddle together or risk slipping. Fig hesitates before squishing too close to Ayda, but Ayda seems to lean into the contact. Fig supposes she would too, if she’d grown up on a planet without ever having met someone else for hundreds of years.

“None of these stars are in my solar system,” Ayda says as they settle in. “That will make rescuing your friend very difficult.”

Fig shrugs. “We’ve been through worse.”

“Yeah, totally,” Adaine agrees. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yes, among many other things. You’re incredibly kind to worry about me.”

Adaine sighs and pulls her knees to her chest. “I used to have really bad panic attacks,” she explains. “Kristen helped me through one on our first day of school when we didn’t even know each other. Kindness from strangers can be life-changing.”

“Fantastic. Exactly. Thank you for offering me the same courtesy.” Ayda stretches her wings; sitting in between Fig and Adaine, they expand past both of their shoulders. Fig watches them unfurl and wonders what it would feel like if Ayda closed them.

Fig watches so intently that she leans back too far, kicks a shingle to steady herself, and starts to fall.

Ayda catches her immediately and drags her back up.

“We’re more stable as a group, if you’re comfortable getting closer,” she says, still holding onto Fig’s arm. Her fingers feel like soothing, sun-warmed rocks.

Adaine grins and winks, and Fig feels a pop in her ears as Adaine sends her a message.

_Ooooooh_ , she trills until she runs out of magic. Fig Prestidigitates a gust of wind into Adaine’s eyes.

(But she scoots closer, too.)

/

Ayda’s warmth is comfy and relaxing, and Fig feels herself lulled into a state of half-sleep. The rain sputters; it seems to start again just as Fig notices that it’s stopped. Occasionally there’s a faint sizzle as a slew of drops lands on Ayda’s hair.

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel!”

All three of them jolt just a little at Kristen’s voice; Fig rolls her eyes and carefully slides to the edge of the roof, leaning down to look at her.

“Way to ruin the moment, Kristen.”

“Oh yeah?” Kristen smirks. “What kinda moment?”

“Gross,” Adaine scoffs, perched next to Fig. “Not like that.”

“Yeah, we were just chilling,” Fig adds. There’s no way to say she doesn’t agree with the gross part without raising suspicion.

“Suuure, whatever you say. You should come inside though, there have been some developments and the rest of the house is starting to wake up.”

A few shingles fall as Ayda shuffles to join them. “What kind of developments?”

Kristen throws up a rock—a pebble really, which Ayda catches before Fig can even really see it. She brings it close to her eyes and inhales sharply.

“Where did you get this.” It’s just short of being a demand, as if Ayda is making a conscious effort to control her tone.

“It showed up the same way you did,” Kristen answers. “In a big ball of thunder and lightning, almost hit Fabian in the face.”

“Did anyone else disappear?”

“No way,” Kristen scoffs. “Give us a little credit; most of the time we learn from our mistakes.” She pauses, and then— “But I do think Jawbone might be missing his second-favorite coffee cup from now on.”

“But you’ve touched it without any adverse side effects, just like I’m touching it now.” Ayda opens her hand and peers at the rock, wobbling in the center of her palm. “Fascinating.”

She jumps off the roof, beating her wings just enough not to fall completely. Ayda lands next to Kristen and peppers her with questions and theories as they walk back inside, stranding Fig and Adaine.

“My Fly spell wore off a while ago.”

Fig waves her hand dismissively. “You think I don’t know how to sneak into your room? Aelwyn definitely knows how to sneak out; I just need you to jimmy the lock on your window.”

Adaine casts Mage Hand instead and pulls the latch open. She kindly waits until they both tumble into her room to start cursing at Fig.

//

_no, words are a language;  
_ _it doesn't deserve such treatment,  
_ _and all my stumbling phrases  
_ _never amounted to anything worth this feeling.  
_ _all this heaven never could describe  
_ _such a feeling as i'm healing, words were never so useful.  
_ _so i was screaming out a language  
_ _that i never knew existed before._

.

**ii.**

It takes a lot of explaining to get the adults to understand why Riz is missing and also who Ayda is. They lead with the fact that she’s probably Aguefort’s daughter, Fig banking on their empathy to override any hostility.

Lydia is the first to react, guiding Ayda into the kitchen and introducing her to food other than whatever she ate on Knot. Adaine catches Fig smiling at her occasional squawks of delight.

Kristen and Gorgug drag Fabian to the library, even as he protests that it’s summer and he shouldn’t have to step foot onto school property for three more months. He’s eventually persuaded when Kristen reminds him that technically they’re not allowed to be there, and the prospect of breaking in somewhere is too enticing to resist.

Jawbone surprisingly asks more questions than Sandra Lynn, reminding them that they don’t have to go through another emotional ordeal given how traumatic spring break was. Sandra Lynn quips that no one could pay them enough money to stay away. She gets the gist of the story and then heads over to the precinct to talk to Sklonda, not trusting any of the kids to diplomatically break the news. Adaine is only slightly offended. She probably could have done it.

Eventually, it’s just her and Jawbone left, sitting on the couch in comfortable silence. Jawbone only sort of got dressed, presumably having run out of his room when Sandra Lynn yelled after everyone tried explaining at once. He’s sitting in a fluffy robe and ratty boxers, half-full coffee mug dangerously close to slipping out of his hands. Adaine doesn’t know how early it is, but if it were a normal day Jawbone would definitely still be sleeping.

She feels like she could fall asleep herself, which is how she knows she must be very tired. Adaine pushes her notebook to the far end of the couch and leans against Jawbone’s shoulder. He’s exceptionally comfy, between his robe and the thick coat of fur it’s trying to contain.

“Hell of a puzzle to solve, kiddo.”

Adaine yawns and slips further down his arm. “Ayda didn’t seem that concerned. She said she’s lived there for a few centuries so it can’t be that dangerous.”

“Fair enough.” He takes a sip of his coffee and grimaces. “I hate letting this get cold. You think maybe she’s just really good at avoiding dangers after hundreds of years?”

“I think you should talk to her.” Adaine yawns again; her eyes feel like they’re being pulled toward her mouth. “She reminds me a lot of me last year.”

“Okay. Here.” He lifts his arm and angles a pillow under Adaine’s head. Moments later, Adaine feels a lump of fabric drop onto her shoulders as Jawbone adjusts a blanket. “Seems like you could use some rest.”

“Don’t you”—she stops talking to heave an enormous yawn—“don’t you want breakfast or something?”

“Don’t worry about me, Adaine. I’m good here.”

/

Jawbone isn’t there when she wakes up again, but Adaine forgives him. He’s probably out in the yard, or talking to Sandra Lynn about where to put Ayda, or maybe even talking to Ayda. Hopefully that one.

Adaine kicks off her blanket, suddenly aware of how hot it’s gotten. She sits up and stretches her arms behind her, cracks her neck a few times before she picks her notebook up off the floor. It’s a little amusing to look through what she wrote down the previous night—it’s always easy to tell when she started to get tired by how quickly her handwriting declines. She skims over her notes and adds a few clarifications in the margins.

“Adaine. Hello.”

Adaine jumps a few inches off the couch and looks around until she finds Ayda, perched (quite literally) on an armchair across from her.

“Hi,” she replies, smiling once her heart rate has calmed down a bit. “How are you?”

Ayda cocks her head. “A deceptively complex question. I’m still on a strange planet that I know isn’t Knot. I seem to have appeared in the best part of it, given that I’m still alive and being cared for by people who are mostly strangers. I’ve been introduced to foods that I’ve never seen before in any of my lives, let alone tasted.” Her lips tick upward just a little at the corners. “All things considered, I think I’m doing well.”

“Good.” Adaine smiles wider. “Have you talked to Jawbone?”

“The furry one.”

“He’s a werewolf,” Adaine laughs. “A man who turns into a werewolf during the full moon, although Jawbone perpetually stays in his wolf form as some kind of political protest.”

“Fascinating. Was he born like that?”

Adaine shakes her head. “No, I don’t know the details of it but he was bitten by someone else who’s a werewolf. Tracker is like that too, only she mostly stays in her human form.”

“Tracker is...the one who was making coffee last night. Was it early this morning? Will you tell me how many hours are in a day here, and also what time it is.”

Adaine checks her watch, then slips it off her wrist and beckons for Ayda to come closer. “Here, this is a watch. It measures what time it is based on a small battery in the back. There are twenty four hours in a day here, so this goes up to twelve and can work for night or day.” She points to the ticking hour and minute hands. “The short one tells what hour it is by which two numbers it falls between; the number it’s gone past is the hour. The long one is the minute hand. There are sixty minutes in an hour, and sixty seconds in a minute. So when the minute hand makes a full revolution around the clock, an hour has passed. The longest one is the second hand, and it operates under the same principles as the minute hand, except that it measures seconds.” She holds the watch up to their ears, in between their heads. “That’s also the one that ticks, which I find pretty soothing.”

Adaine puts the watch down and looks over at Ayda. Alarmingly, there are small rivers of flame pouring down Ayda’s cheeks.

“Ayda?”

Ayda wipes away a few tears; Adaine can hear them sizzle on the carpet when they land. Hopefully the burn marks are something they can clean up with magic.

Ayda sniffles and closes her eyes, breathing until the tears seem to slow down. “Thank you for that explanation. It is extremely gratifying to learn something from someone who isn’t me, or who wasn’t me at some point. I’m feeling a great deal of affection and emotion right now.”

“It’s 11:30,” is all Adaine says, thrown off by Ayda’s sincerity. She holds out her watch. “You can keep this, if you want to study it more.”

“Thank you.” Ayda doesn’t take the watch. “I would love to investigate that and many other things, but I think we should focus on finding your friend first.”

Adaine sighs and sinks back into the couch. “Probably. Is that where everyone is?” She cocks her head toward the ceiling, listening. “The house is never this quiet.”

Ayda nods. “I think so. The three who went to the library earlier have not returned, and Fig went upstairs an hour ago. I’m not hungry anymore so Lydia and I parted ways, and Jawbone and Sandra Lynn are in the garden.”

“You’ve got everyone’s names down pretty well.”

“Remembering names seems like the least I could do since I’ve intruded on all of you.”

Ayda stops speaking but it looks like she’s still waiting for something.

“I can explain to you who everyone is,” Adaine offers.

Ayda’s shoulders relax the slightest bit, and she coos, not unlike a pigeon. “Wonderful. I would love that. I would write everything down but I don’t have my spellbook, as I disappeared quite suddenly. But I do have an excellent memory, so it shouldn’t be an issue.”

“Here.” Adaine rips a few pages from her notebook and hands them over, along with a pen and a hefty book to write on.

Ayda takes them and places them in her lap but doesn’t do anything. “Are you giving these to me to keep?”

“Um.” Adaine frowns. “I will need the book back at some point but you can definitely keep your notes? I don’t care about the pen—”

“I ask because I don’t have anything to give you, and it would be rude not to reciprocate.”

“Oh! In that case, please give the book and pen back to me when you no longer need them and that will be reciprocation enough.”

“Fantastic. Thank you.” She picks up the pen and balances the book and papers on her knee. “I’m ready.”

Adaine explains the dynamics of their social group to Ayda—only in as much detail as is necessary, and slower than she usually might because she spends a good deal of time watching Ayda write. She’s writing in a language that Adaine has never seen before, simple and sloppy runes that she goes back to straighten when Adaine veers into anecdotal or irrelevant information. The runes don’t correspond to the number of words Adaine is saying, so she surmises it must be mostly a phonetic or symbolic alphabet. Adaine loses track for a few moments as she wonders how any of that would be pronounced.

Eventually she sums everything up and Ayda stops writing, having filled most of the front and back of one page.

“You know, Ayda,” Adaine says when Ayda looks up, “I find you just as fascinating as you find all of us.”

“Is that a good thing?”

Adaine smiles. “It is for me. I could ask the same thing of you.”

Ayda pauses for a moment. “I have never spent time with another person, let alone”—she checks her notes—“nine. I find the company extremely comforting. I would say that I find my fascination very good.” She scrunches her nose. “That was an awkward sentence.”

“It’s all right,” Adaine shrugs. “We’re all awkward sometimes; it just comes with being a teenager. Oh. How old are you?”

“I’ve built a 12-story tower so far in this life,” Ayda replies, “and I’ve calculated that on average, I begin each reincarnation with approximately a five-year-old’s intellect.”

Adaine stands up and cracks her back. “I get the sense that you don’t really like your home world, but so far I find everything you’ve said about it incredibly intriguing. If you ever wanted to talk about it, I would happily listen.”

Ayda nods once. “I’ll consider it.”

“Do you want to come with me to the library?”

“Absolutely.”

“Cool. Let’s go get Fig.”

/

It doesn’t occur to Adaine until they’re walking to the library that she might be able to talk to Riz directly.

Fig rifles through her pockets, looking for a lighter because she doesn’t want to waste a spell slot just to light a cigarette.

“Adaine,” she says, twisting away as she pats down her many, many pockets, “can you message Gorgug and ask if he has my lighter? Maybe he picked it up from the bus.”

Adaine reaches into one of her own pockets instead and waits for Fig to look at her.

“Hey!” Fig plucks the lighter from Adaine’s hand. “This isn’t mine; where’d you get it?”

Adaine holds her jacket open. “There’s a whole city in here, Fig. I can pull out just about anything, remember?”

Ayda bends down, scrutinizing Adaine’s jacket. “An entire city in one piece of clothing? Fascinating.”

Fig lights up. “Do you think you could find some more smokes, too? I’m probably gonna finish this one by the time we get there.”

“Is it a pocket dimension? Do you govern the city just by wearing the jacket?”

“Actually, can you just message Gorgug anyway; he definitely has some in his hoodie.”

Adaine stops and waits for the two of them to notice her.

“This is why I don’t like summer,” she says once they turn around. “It atrophies my brain. I forgot about the phoenix, and now I’ve completely overlooked a way of communicating with Riz.” She turns toward Ayda. “Ayda, I’m very glad you’re here. Helping you get home and rescuing Riz will allow me to practice skills I already have and learn new ones in the process.”

“I’m...very glad I could help.”

Fig scrunches her nose; her cigarette balances precariously on her bottom lip. “Huh?”

“Sending!” Adaine all but shouts. “It works across planes! I bet there’s a good chance I can talk to Riz.”

Ayda’s hair flares and she lifts from the ground just a little. “I’m familiar with that spell as well. I wish I were acquainted with Riz; that would possibly double the amount of times we could speak with him.”

Adaine looks up at Ayda. “How do you know the same magic we do?”

“I don’t know. Are you threatened?”

“No, no.” Adaine shakes her head. “It’s just—I don’t think you were supposed to grow up on Knot, Ayda. I think you’re supposed to be here.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

“Yeah, you totally fit,” Fig mumbles, scrolling through her crystal. “Hey, when you say ‘acquainted with’, do you mean you’d have to, like, _know_ Riz, or can you just get the gist?”

Ayda furrows her brows. “I’m not a good person to ask about social requirements for spells.”

“What’s your real question, Fig?” Adaine prompts.

Fig holds up her crystal, showing them a video of Riz from the Nightmare Forest. “I have, like, a million of these on here, plus a bunch of others that are actually fun and not-violent. Do you think if Ayda watched them, she’d be able to cast the spell?”

“That’s...a really good idea, actually.” Fig manages to look proud and offended at the same time. “Why don’t you show Ayda some of the videos and I’ll work on a message to send.”

“Sure.”

Ayda and Fig sit down on the curb; Fig scooches closer than Adaine thinks she usually would with a relative stranger. Adaine watches them for a moment—the way Fig smiles at everything Ayda says, in that very comforting and accepting Fig way. Ayda’s wings twitch behind her back a little bit before relaxing, stretching out to almost lay flat around them both.

Adaine sighs, and misses Riz.

She shakes her head and starts constructing a message, muttering words to herself to figure out if they’re efficient or not. Fig and Ayda get louder and louder as Fig gets distracted, moving away from videos of Riz to just photos on her crystal of all the stupid shit they’ve done.

Adaine closes her eyes, counts on her fingers one last time, and speaks.

_“Hope you’re okay. Whole planet’s a maze. Ayda (half-phoenix) is Aguefort’s daughter, wants to help. Describe landmarks? Ayda might send messages. You threw a rock?”_

It seems like more of an effort to cast the spell this time, but Adaine is pretty sure it went through. She bites her nails and watches Fig and Ayda some more—it’s not helping to see that Fig is just showing off now, but it’s nice to see her smile so much after a harrowing spring break.

_“Hello.”_ Adaine gasps and shushes Fig, even though she’s not close enough to be a distraction. _“I’m fine. Maze sucks.”_ Riz’s voice sounds muffled, like someone’s playing a recording from the bottom of a well. _“Landmarks? This is a maze-planet. I threw that rock for science. Guess it worked! Get. Me. Out. Of. Here.”_

“It worked!” Adaine yells and pops her ears, wincing as she jumps. “Riz is okay; Sending worked!”

//

The first night is hard. Riz doesn’t know anything about hunting or how to identify poisonous plants or anything. He finds a river and takes a chance on the water, but resolves to go hungry for as long as he can stand it. To distract himself, he spends a few hours investigating the surrounding area.

This place is a maze, literally and metaphorically. Once Riz gets to the first wall he was running toward, he can see more to his right—as straight and tall as the first two he saw and running in various directions. He looks around for a stick and marks an X in the sand, plus the time. Who knows how time works in this place, but at least his watch hasn’t stopped.

He follows the course of a few walls, leaving the same X’s and timestamps along the way. The walls are each no more than a mile apart, judging by his jogging pace. Some of them have holes and chips in them, but for the most part they’re flat and smooth all the way to the top. The further in Riz goes, the greener his surroundings get. Not quite a forest, but it probably will be eventually.

After a while he waits until he finds a tree with fairly low branches, climbs up, and settles in to get a little rest, if not a few hours of actual sleep.

Even in his dreams he doesn’t relax. Riz dozes and dreams of the labyrinth, runs and backtracks to determine the most efficient way to explore. A giant eye follows him everywhere, but other than that it’s pretty much real life.

He’s abruptly roused when Adaine messages him, which is a good sign, even if it is super disruptive. He tries not to sound so cranky when he replies, but it’s hard when you’re stuck in a really strange place without any kind of support.

Riz waits for another message, but he doesn’t hear Adaine again. He climbs down from the tree to kill some time, picking bark out of his hands and clothes when he finally drops down.

_“—Riz. This...Ayda.”_ A voice fills his mind, echoing only in his left ear. “ _I’ve painted—tops walls. —tell what colors you—. Thank you, and I’m sorry.”_

The message is considerably choppier than the one Adaine sent, but it gets better as it goes on. Riz wishes they had more than twenty five words to work with.

_“Nice to meet you, Ayda._ ” Riz winces; he’s lamenting that twenty five is too few words and here he’s wasted five of his own. _“Might take a while to see anything at the top; I’m small. Check back in an hour, if you can.”_

He sighs and looks back up at the tree, trying to chart the best path to get to the top. He hopes it’s tall enough to see the top of the wall; everything looks too tall to him. Still, if it isn’t, there are more trees around, and what else does he have to do?

When Riz finally gets home, he won’t tell his friends about his first three attempts. The trees are the wrong kind to climb—maybe their bark sucks or they’ve started to rot or something else like that. If anyone asks, it’s definitely not his fault that he ends up on his ass three times.

The fourth tree is a success, though it takes him a long time to climb to the top, or at least as close to the top as he feels safe. Riz’s feet slip a bunch and a branch cracks toward the end of his climb that almost sends him back to the ground, but he eventually gets settled in the bend of a few boughs. Riz is glad for his slight frame; no one else would be able to get up this high, probably. It’s a small comfort and for a few moments, he can forget how absolutely terrifying this is.

Riz closes his eyes and takes comfort in the breeze as he waits for another message. Under different circumstances, this might even be peaceful. He breathes out, gathers his thoughts, and chances a look at the tops of the walls in front of him and beyond.

It’s not quite a rainbow. The paints aren’t as bright as they might be at home; they’re probably sourced from plants and berries. Riz can see purple stripes on one, a solid swatch of green on another.

In the distance, probably five or six miles away if the space between walls is consistent, a line of stone blazes in sparks of glittering orange.

_“Have you had success.”_ Ayda’s voice is clearer this time, with only a few crackles of static. _“I don’t have any other information to share. This is the end of my message.”_

Riz smiles in spite of himself, working quickly to form a response before time runs out.

_“Purple stripes are closest. After that, solid green. There’s a wall of fire a few miles out, and colors I can’t see after that.”_

He settles against the trunk of the tree again, stretching his legs out as far as the branches will support him. The sun is close to setting and the night creatures are coming out; Riz hears a hoot that almost sounds like an owl, the growls of what he assumes are large wolf-adjacent animals. Riz is a professional investigator but he wouldn’t know a wolf from a bear; he’s a city kid through and through.

_“Riz, it’s me,”_ Adaine says, rushed and loud after a few minutes. _“The wall of fire is Ayda’s house; it has food and water. We’re all working on getting you back soon. Miss you.”_

_“Yeah, miss you, too_ ,” he manages to grumble before he falls out of the tree. The other twenty one words are curses and shouts of pain.

Maybe by some stroke of luck Adaine didn’t hear him.

He dusts himself off, and, not for the last time, starts jogging through the maze.

//

_another head aches, another heart breaks—  
_ _(i'm so much older than i can take,  
_ _and my affection, well it comes and goes)—  
_ _i need direction to perfection; no, no, no, no,  
_ _help me out._

.

**iii.**

He wakes to the sound of a book slamming down on their table. Kristen swats at an invisible enemy in her sleep. Gorgug doesn’t move an inch.

“My bad,” Fig mumbles. She doesn’t look up from her book, so Fabian wonders how sorry she can really be.

Fabian stretches and wipes sleep from his eyes. “When did you get here?”

“A few hours ago. Adaine and Ayda are a few sections over trying to get at the restricted books.”

“Incorrect.” Fabian instinctively curls his hands into fists at the sound of Ayda’s voice, somewhere behind him. “I have returned with a stack of promising volumes.” She walks around to sit next to Fig, dropping her books on the table with significantly more consideration. “These should be enough to occupy us for several hours.”

“Perfect.” Fabian stands up and cracks his neck, deftly avoiding Gorgug’s outstretched leg as he pushes his chair in. “Have fun with that.”

Ayda cocks her head. “You’re not joining us?”

“I’ve been researching all day.” Fig scoffs; Fabian rolls his eyes. “Okay, I did _some_ research today. But it’s _summer_. I should be getting drunk or having some other kind of adventures.”

“What constitutes an adventure?”

“Exciting things!” Fabian whoops. “Fighting dragons or jumping off cliffs or something else where there are lots of swords and a risk of death.” He waits while Ayda thinks. “Do you not have adventures?”

Ayda blinks a few times. “By your definition, I have adventures every day. There are many creatures and traps on my planet, and the ones I have met frequently try to kill me, or at least seem prone to assault. Occasionally I’ve even been attacked while reading; perhaps you would find research more thrilling on Knot.”

“Not?”

Ayda nods. “My planet.”

“Like the thing you tie,” Fig explains.

“How do you tie a planet?” Gorgug asks.

“Impossible.” Ayda frowns and furrows her brows. “I don’t know if I can explain just how impossible that is.”

“Her planet’s called Knot,” Adaine clarifies, turning a page in her book. “It’s more about untying than tying, though to be clear, you cannot tie it.”

“ _Fascinating_ ,” Fabian drawls, rolling his eyes for as long as it takes him to finish saying the word. “I’m leaving now; call me when there’s something to stab.”

He turns around and barely makes it three steps before Ayda drops in front of him.

“You enjoy life more when swords are present?” she asks, tilting her head.

Fabian shrugs. “I guess. Who wouldn’t?”

“A simple question that would take a deceptively long time to answer, mostly because I have never used a sword before.”

“Okay…”

Ayda shifts her weight on her feet, alternately glancing between Fabian and everyone else still at the table.

“Perhaps we could solve two problems at once,” she suggests, “if you wanted to teach me how to wield a sword.”

“And by two problems you mean me not wanting to read books, and you...not knowing how to swordfight?”

Ayda blinks several times before she responds. “Yes. That is what I mean.”

Fabian shrugs again. “Hell yeah, that sounds like a great time to me. And you know, as long as we’re doing things based on what I think is cool, we should probably race all the way there.”

Ayda’s hair and eyes flare, twinkling playfully. “Considering that I can fly, I’ll probably beat you.”

Fabian grins. “Not a chance.”

She zooms out of the library anyway, leaving a flare of sparks in her wake.

“Hangman?” Fabian tilts his head the way he always does when he waits for a response.

“Sire!” the Hangman shouts back. “A woman with flames for wings just flew out of the building!”

“I know; we’re racing. She thinks she’s going to win but I think we should show her my secret weapon.”

“Is that me?”

“Of _course_ it’s you, Hangman! What else would it be?”

Fabian jogs off toward the satisfied sound of an engine revving.

/

They travel relatively slowly to Fabian’s house, once Fabian proves without a doubt that the Hangman can drive faster than Ayda can fly. Ayda hovers next to the bike, doing lazy loops around him when they get to a stoplight. Fabian can hardly take his eyes off of her—not in a flirtatious way or anything, but she’s just so hard not to notice.

Seacaster Manor is quiet when they finally arrive; Fabian thinks he can see the glow of a light from the room that Cathilda, no longer hiding her daredevil past, uses to train, but other than that the house is dark. Fabian parks the Hangman, giving the back wheel a little kick to prompt him into dropping the kickstand. The Hangman grumbles one final time, a sound that might, in another life, be an affectionate bark.

Ayda stares up at the house, her feet lifting up off the ground as she cranes to get a better look.

“This is an extraordinary building,” she says, eyes wide. “Is it one building?”

Fabian stands next to her, hands in his pockets as he follows her gaze. “Kind of? Most of it is my dad’s old pirate ship but he had to make some modifications when we moved here. You know, insulation, indoor plumbing, regular-sized bedrooms and stuff.”

“I don’t know.” She turns her head to look at him, planting her feet. “Will you explain it to me?”

“Oh.” Fabian scratches the back of his neck. “I’m not the best at explaining,” he hedges. “You probably want Adaine or Riz for that, maybe Fig if you can stop her from going off track.”

“Okay.”

“Okay? Just like that?”

Ayda flutters her wings. They sound like they’re made of regular feathers instead of flames, and Fabian tries not to stare too long.

“Everyone has things they’re not good at,” she volunteers.

“Yeah? What are yours?” he presses, smiling.

Ayda smiles back. “I think we’re about to find out.”

“Fair enough.”

  


He leads her to the training area in the yard, giving it a quick once-over to determine how much they should spread out. Fabian gently guides Ayda into the correct position, setting her shoulders and nudging her legs into a wider stance, before backing up to stand a few feet in front of her.

“So the most important part of sword-fighting is your feet,” he begins.

“Do you use them to attack?”

“Wh—no.” Fabian picks up a practice sword and throws it to Ayda. He doesn’t wait for her to catch it before he starts advancing on her, speed-walking with aggressive intention. She catches the sword but doesn’t raise it, instead backing up with a pace to match his.

“What are you doing,” she says, glancing from side to side in an effort not to trip.

“What are _you_ doing?” he fires back, still walking. “I’m weaponless, but you’re not.”

Ayda blinks as she backpedals, her grip tightening on the wooden sword. In the time it takes her to decide to use it, Fabian rushes forward and ducks to position himself behind her, deftly staying out of the way of her wings. The heat coming off of them brings a flush to his face, but he’s far enough away to avoid a burn.

Ayda swings around to face him, sword outstretched.

Fabian clasps his hands behind his back and smiles.

“See? Once you know where you’re going, you can be confident about what you’re doing.”

“Is that how you live your life?”

Fabian tries not to laugh uproariously at that. He mostly succeeds.

“I’m sorry,” he says, clutching at his stomach, “I promise I’m not laughing at you, it’s just—my life is a _huge_ fucking nightmare. I have no _idea_ what’s going on.” He lets out a few more deep belly laughs and feels a flurry of nerves go with them.

“Would you like to talk about it?”

“I thought we were here to spar.”

“I can do both.”

“You don’t know how to spar,” Fabian challenges.

Ayda doesn’t blink. “I can do many things.”

Fabian rolls his eyes. “Fine, hold on. Let me just—”

He jogs back to the shed where they keep all the equipment, pulling out a second beat-up practice sword. It has nicks in it from years of training and ambush attacks from his dad. Fabian can almost hear the whistle of Bill Seacaster’s saber, polished and so unlike his rakish laugh. The marks left in the wood almost seem to laugh along.

Fabian shakes his head and jogs back.

The sword is light in his hands, so much lighter than what he’s used to that it almost feels like he isn’t holding onto anything. Ayda watches him closely as he bobbles it in his fingers.

“Are you sure you should be teaching me?”

Fabian waves a dismissive hand. “It’s just been a while since I’ve held a practice one; I’m so used to the weight of the real thing. I’m _so_ ready for this.”

It’s a little awkward to start, since he’s not in the practice of teaching, but Fabian thinks back to his early days with Herzon. He remembers the parries and drills that gave him the most callouses, the combinations that made him so angry he tripped over himself. Fabian mixes those in with the knowledge and sense of self he’s gained ever since he started fighting with his sheet. He’s never been more in tune with his body than these past six months, and Fabian has spent a lot more time thinking about it than most people.

Ayda is a quick learner, and strong, but after an hour or so, Fabian notices that she’s trying to copy his movements exactly. An admirable goal, to be sure, but not the best one for someone who almost has an entire foot of height on him.

“Ayda. Hold on, hold on.”

She straightens with a huff and shakes out her wings. “Is something wrong?”

"No, not wrong." He lets his sword hang at his side. "You're just doing everything I do."

Ayda nods. "Yes. Thank you."

"Oh, it's—good job," Fabian equivocates. "You're picking it all up but you should fight in a way that works for you."

"This...is working? Or maybe it's not, if you're stopping already."

"It's not- _not_ working. But I fight this way because of my size and my speed, and you should be doing that, too."

"Okay. Can you illustrate in further detail how your body informs your fighting style so that I might adapt the theory to my own.”

He does exactly that, or as close to exactly as he can with her sharp eyes tracking every movement. Fabian has been watched before but under Ayda’s gaze he’s starting to understand what it is to be seen.

Her brow furrows the longer he speaks, and he can’t tell if it’s because she doesn’t like what he’s saying or if she’s just that serious about listening to him.

When he lets more than twenty seconds hang in between his words, Fabian closes his mouth and steps back.

“Sorry. I’m not the best at talking for this long; usually someone else cuts in by now…”

“I will learn the tactful way to occasionally interrupt you.”

“That’s—” Fabian runs a hand through his hair and drops his shoulders. “Honestly? That’s really comforting.”

“Fantastic. Can I offer an observation?”

“Sure.”

“Parts of your fighting style fit your size, but other times you move as if you were significantly smaller.”

“Oh. Yeah. Well, I was.”

Ayda blinks and shakes her head. “Of course. How early into your childhood did you start training?”

Fabian sighs. There’s a throbbing in his chest that still crops up in moments like these, still fresh enough to sting. He drops his sword and motions for Ayda to do the same.

“Do you like kippers? Fish,” he clarifies, when her brows furrow again.

“No. Not yet. What exactly are they and can we sample some?”

“Yeah, that’s—of course. That’s exactly what we’re doing; come on.”

Fabian gestures for Ayda to follow him as he walks toward the house; she stutter-steps a few times before slowing her pace to stay in line with him.

“Is this part of training?” she asks.

Fabian glances up at her as they stroll. His legs rustle the grass as they move through it but Ayda makes it crunch, sometimes singe if a spark falls from her wings. “Are you asking if us not-swordfighting is part of sword-fighting training?”

“I’m curious about your method of instruction. I made a few observations about how you fight and instead of explaining them, you asked me if I like fish. Either you’re prone to non sequiturs or you’re employing an approach to teaching that I’m not familiar with.”

“Oh. Sorry, I guess that was pretty confusing.”

Ayda nods. “Almost everything has been confusing for me since I appeared in Elmville, but I look forward to these opportunities to learn.” They stop in front of the house and Ayda cranes her neck to look up at it, eyes wide and glittering. “This is truly a spectacular house.”

“Wait ‘til you see the inside,” Fabian baits, but it doesn’t seem to have the enticing effect he intended. Instead, Ayda shifts on her feet again; the fire in her eyes seems to spread to her cheeks in as close an expression to a blush as she’s going to get. “Or...we could stay out here?” he suggests.

Ayda nods again. “That would be preferable. I’m used to spending much more time outside than you and your friends, it seems.”

“Oh yeah, that’s cool.” Fabian unlocks the door anyway, twisting the knob and opening it as quietly as he can. “The crow’s nest up there has a really nice view of the city, if you wanted to check it out. I can meet you up there with some snacks?”

“Incredible. A fantastic proposition; thank you, Fabian.”

Fabian watches as she flies off again, hovering before she lands in the crow’s nest. He smiles to himself, wondering what it might be like to take a pair of wings sailing, and walks inside.

Cathilda meets him in the kitchen; he’s never understood how she’s just... _there_ , wherever he is, but he’s certainly grown to appreciate it.

“We’ve got a visitor, I see,” she says brightly with a smile.

“Yeah, it’s a really long story, Cathilda.”

“No rush to tell me, master Fabian.”

“No, I _definitely_ want to tell you,” he clarifies. “Just not until we’re done...writing it?” He rubs a hand at the back of his neck and looks up toward the roof. “That probably sounded dumb.”

Cathilda shakes her head. “I understand what you meant, dear. Here.” She holds out two tins of kippers, unopened. “Just in case you or your guest have large appetites at this late hour.”

Fabian takes them from her, grinning. He thinks about giving her a quick kiss on the cheek—even starts to bend down a little—but shakes his head and steps back before he can. Cathilda rolls her eyes and titters, sending him off with a pat to his hand.

Fabian vaults up the stairs, avoiding the squeaky steps and tiptoeing through the hallways. He gently lifts up a window near his father’s old office and shifts the tins of fish between his teeth as he climbs the trellis on the side of the ship. After that, it’s just a few strategic hops and a trip up another familiar ladder before he joins Ayda at the once-sentry post.

She’s looking out over the front of the house, standing perfectly still and deliberately not touching anything.

“Forgot how small this can be for two people,” Fabian says by way of an apology. He pops the tab on one of the tins and peels back the lid. “It used to be even smaller—my father had it enlarged when I was born. Said a—well, he always said that kids should have places to climb.”

“Your entire house is made of wood,” Ayda replies, “a fact I hadn’t considered in great depth until I landed up here. I can be prone to fire.”

“It’s okay; so’s Fig. You can relax, Ayda; I promise you won’t burn anything down.”

She looks at him for a few moments longer—blinking, shifting her head—before letting her shoulders fall. Her wings unfurl and she drops her hands to the railing. She relaxes the same way Adaine does, Fabian notices, which is to say not much at all.

“Fig is flammable?” Ayda asks.

Fabian grins. “She would object and say otherwise, but I don’t think she’s _flammable_ , necessarily. Her dad’s just some crazy powerful devil, so she has a lot of fire magic and touching her always feels like sticking your hand into a pile of hot coals.”

“Marvelous,” Ayda says, so quietly that Fabian might not have heard it if they weren’t standing so close to each other.

“This house definitely has its dangers but the crow’s nest is fireproof, at least.” He holds out the tin to her, deftly picking out three slim fish as he does. “Kippers?”

“Absolutely.” She follows his lead, from how he holds them to how he chews them, and it isn’t as unsettling as Fabian might have imagined. Honestly it’s kind of endearing, especially when her eyes go wide and she shakes her head a little at the taste.

“Good, right?” Fabian grins and swallows, definitely in a larger bite than Cathilda would recommend. He wipes his mouth just in case Ayda cares about stuff like that.

“I don’t...really know how to describe what this tastes like. I have nothing like this at home.”

“Do you like it?”

Ayda cocks her head, licks her lips and swallows one more time. “Yes. It’s very salty, perhaps injuriously so, and yet I could happily eat more.”

Fabian hands her the second tin without a word. She takes it slowly and studies it for a moment before craning her neck to look up at the sky. Fabian watches and waits—and waits, and waits, until the quiet of the night is broken by the sizzle of fiery tears on the wood beneath them.

“Ayda?”

“Am I harming the floor?”

“No, I swear.” Fabian swipes a hand in the remnant of a tear, which fizzled for a moment upon impact before immediately turning to ash. It looks gritty and cool as fuck against his light brown skin. “Totally fireproof; I wasn’t lying.”

Ayda lowers her chin and looks at him, glancing between his eyes and his finger as she wipes her cheeks. “This fish is the most amazing thing I’ve ever eaten. Adaine gave me a watch today and Fig showed me how your crystals worked and told me enough about your friend Riz that I was able to Send him a message, successfully using a spell I’ve known for over a hundred years and have never had a reason to cast. I feel...overwhelmed at everyone’s generosity, and I thought maybe I could get a reprieve from these feelings if I looked at the sky. But this sky is definitively not _my_ sky, and it’s unbearably beautiful in its novelty.” She sniffs and presses her fingers over her eyes. “I apologize if I’ve made you uncomfortable by crying. It’s truly paralyzing, at times, just to exist in a world where things are so present and alive. I may cry several more times over the course of my stay here.”

“Oh, that’s...that’s okay,” Fabian says, like an idiot. “I cry all the time.”

Ayda wipes the last of the tears away. “That seems unlikely.”

“Well, I’m learning to,” he corrects. “I used to cry a lot and then I didn’t cry for even longer, and now I’m trying to do more of it.”

“Why.”

Fabian sighs. “It’s…a whole thing,” he says as he waves his hand in sweeping, vague shapes. “Which, you might want to hear about?” he guesses, when Ayda doesn’t say anything. She nods. Fabian sighs again and slides dramatically down the post in the middle of their too-small perch **.** “I don’t know what living on Knot is like, but I assume it’s pretty hard.”

“Very,” Ayda confirms.

“Yeah. Here, too, but for different reasons. It might sound silly if I explain it, but—” Fabian swallows. On nights like these, when he sits outside and takes the time to travel inward, it sometimes feels like there are phantom parts of him tingling. His neck bobs with an invisible weight; he touches the wood panels of his house with two sets of fingertips. Fabian stretches his leg out and it feels like he hits the wood a good four inches before he actually does.

“You said I fought like I was smaller,” he says. “I used to be—my body didn’t look the way it was supposed to until about a year ago. But I started learning how to fight as soon as I could hold a sword, so.”

Ayda rustles her feathers; Fabian watches as the plume of flame on her head flares a few times. “I understand,” she finally says.

“You do?”

“Yes,” she nods. “Every time I begin a new life, my body feels both familiar and foreign to me.” She holds out her arms and twists them so Fabian can see all of her tattoos. “I hold the memory of every previous-me in my skin but my mind is entirely new.”

“Oh.” Fabian stretches his other leg to match the first one. “That’s not—that’s only kind of like what I’ve gone through. I don’t want to belittle your experience, but”—he touches his chest, absently landing on the parts of it that are still soft in a way he’s learning to live with—“I’ve gone through a bunch of magical procedures and therapy to get here. How I look and how I feel—this part of being trans is an on-purpose thing.”

“Trans?”

Fabian rolls his eyes. “I’m not rolling my eyes specifically at you, Ayda, it’s just—I’m literally the _perfect_ person to explain gender to you, and I just straight up don’t want to.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

Ayda nods. “I’ve made a few helpful inferences. Thank you for sharing that with me.”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever.” Fabian tries not to hide his face too much as he blinks away the tears starting to form. “You’re pretty cool, you know.”

“Yes, Fig told me. I’ve been isolated on my home world for hundreds of years and yet, astoundingly, the first group of people I meet are ones with whom I seem to share many things in common. By some transitive social property, I think that means you’re cool, too.”

“Well, I knew that already,” Fabian smiles. “Hey, I don’t wanna step on your toes or anything—I know it was tough to hear about earlier—but can I talk about your dad a little bit?”

Ayda draws her wings toward her shoulders and straightens her back. “Why?”

“I’m not, like, Adaine-smart or anything so I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think it was a coincidence that we were the first people you met. Your dad’s kind of a big deal. Famous,” Fabian clarifies when Ayda cocks her head. “Super famous, super powerful wizard, and also the principal of our school.”

“That would be a very large coincidence,” Ayda almost whispers.

“You could—my dad was famous too. It can be a lot to talk to someone with such a big personality; I get it. But we’re kind of on our way to being a big deal too, so, you know. We could reach out, if you wanted to.”

“Can I talk to your father?”

“Oh. Not unless you want to go to Hell; I killed him last year.”

Ayda blinks. “Considering the similarities we’ve found in each other tonight, is it a requirement that I kill my father, too?”

Fabian guffaws. “You know, sometimes it feels like he deserves it. But I think he’d be happy just to talk to you.”

Ayda slides down to sit next to him. Her feet stretch out even less than his do, so he angles his legs to give her more room.

“I will consider it,” she says softly.

“That’s great.” Fabian looks at his crystal—it’s late enough that they should really get some sleep, but there’s something magical about late-night confessionals that keeps him from suggesting it.

“Sunrise is in a few hours,” he says instead. “It looks really fucking cool from up here.”

“Excellent.”

//

Ayda’s house—tower, really—is super fucking cool.

“This is super fucking cool,” Riz says to himself, because it’s the sort of thing that should be said out loud even if no one else can hear it.

It’s twelve stories, if he’s counting the windows right—he’s small and he has to crane his neck a lot more than the average person, so he might have missed one or two. But: allegedly twelve stories of a circular tower, with one room on every floor. There are hatches he can open on the ceilings of the first three floors, but after that the only access points are windows. Makes sense when you can fly, but Riz desperately wants to explore.

He spends the better part of an hour navigating between floors, idly flipping through papers and books he finds. At one point he tries to pick the lock on an ornate chest, but he’s blown backwards after a few unsuccessful attempts, and the ringing in his ear is enough to persuade him to stop.

Riz makes his way back to the first floor and flops on a bed that could easily hold three of him. He sighs a little and closes his eyes—not that he _needs_ sleep, but it feels good to be still after all the running he’s been doing. He slides up to get a better position on the pillow. Something rustles underneath his head.

Riz reaches back and finds a few sheets of paper. They’ve been loosely tied together with a rough string, and they look fairly old—soft to the touch, almost like cotton, though they don’t seem to have yellowed too much.

“‘Welcome to the World’,” he mumbles to himself.

Riz frowns and flips the page.

> _Hello, Ayda._
> 
> _That’s your name. You can choose something else, if you find one that fits better. Please record any changes to the ledger on the inside of this book, though make sure to leave a record of all the names that came before, in case—_
> 
> _Excuse me. Sometimes I find myself traveling too far down one line of thought, and you probably don’t care about that. I’ll start over._
> 
> _Hello, Ayda. Welcome to this world. You are the only person in existence._
> 
> _I’m not trying to scare you, but it comforts me to make a list of unshakeable facts that I know. My list is very long, but I’ll try to narrow it down to things that are relevant to you:_
> 
>   1. _This planet is called Knot. A knot is a loop of string, rope, or similar material twisted and tightened against itself in order to fasten, bind, or connect something. Metaphorically—that is, in a less literal sense—a knot is something to be unraveled._
>   2. _I have named this planet Knot because it is also a maze. There are walls in every direction; too tall for you to fly over now, but you’ll get there one day. They are approximately a mile apart from each other._
>   3. _Between the walls lurk beasts, mysterious items, and dangerous landmarks. You will only be ready to engage with them when the walls no longer seem so tall._
>   4. _You are in my house. In time, you will be powerful enough to build your own house. Until then, please remain inside, and venture out only if you’re forced to. There is food in one bowl that will never run out, and water in the other. There are hatches on the ceilings of the first three floors if you need to stretch your wings. Don’t hurt yourself trying to fly; strength will come when you need it._
>   5. _This is your first day of life, but intellectually you’re at least five years old. I’ve found that to be a useful marker for progress. Much like the name ledger in the front of this book, there is an age ledger in the back. Please record your age before you ash into the next life._
>   6. _(You will not ash for a very long time.)_
> 

> 
> _I’ve spent many lives mapping the geography and curiosities of this planet in an attempt to reach the center. I believe there is a prize there, or maybe a way to defeat the maze. You’re not bound to follow in my footsteps, but if you’re anything like me, you’ll find it a worthwhile endeavor._
> 
> _You are me, but I’m not you. I wish I could meet you._
> 
> _I know you’ll be extraordinary._
> 
> _—Ayda_

“Woah.”

Riz exhales, puffing out his cheeks and letting them deflate in a long, slow breath. He sits up and puts the quasi-book back where it was, patting the pillow protecting it.

If he knew a lick of magic, he’d use it to talk to his mom.

Instead, he gets up and cracks his knuckles, his back, his neck—anything, really. He cracks his body and groans at the way he feels a little looser, a little less beat-up.

The bowls of food and water are in the kitchen part of the room; Riz drags a chair over so he can peer into them. Nothing looks moldy or rotten or out of place. He touches a finger to the water—feels like water. The food bowl looks like it’s filled with some kind of trail mix. Riz scoops a handful out and holds it, waiting. It takes a few moments, but the space slowly fills with more food—Riz watches the shapes of nuts and dried fruit form, ideas that he can only see if he focuses, and then all of a sudden he blinks and it’s just there, as if he never removed anything. Riz reaches out and finds the same thing to be true of the water.

He eats the handful he’s holding.

Two seconds later, Riz sticks his whole face in.

(Maybe it’s a good thing he’s alone.)

Eventually he fills up (and makes a note to sweep up the mess on the floor, casualties of a frenzied goblin appetite). He wipes the wet from his mouth and lets out a few satisfied belches, wishing Gorgug or Ragh were around to appreciate them. When he gets back home, maybe Gorgug can help the Arborly gnomes figure out how to make t-shirts capable of taking video. There are just so many situations where you might want to record something, and Riz seems to keep getting himself into all of them.

He sleeps for a few hours, carefully avoiding Ayda’s papers. Oddly, it’s the soundest he’s slept in a while—comforted, however briefly, by the safety of a house and the knowledge that his friends know where he is and are actively working to rescue him.

Fitting, then, that Adaine is the one who wakes him up.

_“Riz! Been reading all night; haven’t really found anything out. We think Ayda is Aguefort’s daughter so we’ll ask him next. How are you?”_

Riz shakes his head, clearing it of Adaine’s frantic tone, the one she only gets after a sleepless night of research.

_“Found Ayda’s place_ ,” he responds before time runs out. “ _Ate some food, got some rest. Is she with you?”_

Adaine’s next message crackles with a little more static. _“She went home with Fabian. I can message her to contact you. Otherwise, three more uses of Sending after this.”_

_“Yeah, ask her to message me, please. When she can, it isn’t anything urgent. Just...wanna say something.”_ He clears his throat and looks away, though no one is around to see him blush. _“Thanks for checking in.”_

It could be a coincidence, the warm breeze that tickles his hair.

Or it could be magic.

/

_“Riz. Adaine said you wanted to speak with me.”_

Riz snorts and sits up abruptly, pulled from sleep he’d reluctantly slipped into. He rubs his eyes and shakes his head, blinking alertness back into his mind before time runs out to respond to Ayda.

_“Found your tower_ ,” he counts slowly. _“Found your story, about you and Knot. Wanted to say sorry you were lonely. Do you know how you got to Spyre?”_

Rather than waiting, Ayda’s second message comes through almost immediately. She sounds just as frantic as Adaine had, and it sends Riz’s heart rate skyrocketing.

_“Touched something, maybe stone? About five miles southwest of tower. Maps in the chest on the second floor. Not plotted, but near the fire bog.”_

_“I think I know what you mean,”_ Riz responds. _“The pillar. I touched one too but it had rules. Message me in a few hours?”_

He’s scrambling up to get to the ceiling hatch before he even thinks about waiting for confirmation from Ayda. The stories in this tower are tall enough to accommodate someone with wings, which means everything is that much more inaccessible for Riz. But there are cabinets and furniture to jump on, and he’s nothing if not a crafty goblin.

It takes him half an hour to get to the second floor and less than a second to forget to worry about how he’s gonna get back down.

Bookcases span the width of the room, magically altered to accommodate the curved walls. Adaine would lose her mind if she got to spend even a minute in here, not least because, as far as Riz can tell, most of these books aren’t written in Common.

He’s tempted to pull one of them out anyway, but Ayda told him where the maps are, and he should be prepared if she does end up messaging him. So he jogs across the room to a wide chest, flips the latches, and settles in to do some sleuthing.

There are dozens of maps inside—Riz spends the next twenty minutes categorizing them by cartographer. Not that he recognizes any names, but it’s easy enough to match typography and the map-maker’s emblem. Some of the maps even look like they represent places he’s heard of, places within or near Spyre. He desperately wishes he had his briefcase to stuff them—roll them _carefully_ —inside.

Riz gathers the maps he’s fairly sure are Ayda’s creations and rolls them out across two tables. The largest of the bunch is a very, very loosely sketched version of the continent Ayda’s been living on—the borders don’t look very accurate, but the legend is meticulously to scale.

Riz spends the bulk of his time looking over the other four maps, each of which charts the area around a different tower. From what he can tell, Ayda has spent at least four lifetimes building towers and exploring the maze—and, along the way, marking rivers and forests; wyrmlings and will-o’-the-wisps; treacherous fire bogs and marshes oozing with poisonous tar and caves of animals he’s never heard of before.

He finds the fire bog on the map that corresponds to this Ayda and draws a faint circle where he thinks the pillar she touched might be. He leans closer toward the map, studying the area in a five-mile radius of the tower. Assuming it’s the center of the circle, Ayda’s pillar is southwest near the fire bog, and if—he traces his fingers along the walls and forest he ran through to get here—assuming this map is accurately scaled as well…

Riz’s finger comes to a stop in the northeast region of his radius. The tower is equidistant between his pillar and Ayda’s.

“So fucking badass,” he whispers, wishing, once again, he had an audience.

There’s a good chance there are pillars in the other two quadrants of the circle.

Riz only needs to ask Ayda if it’s safer to fuck around in a forest or an open field, and he’s one step closer to coming home.

//

_i built a constellation-lair  
_ _out of the moles that hovered there;  
_ _(make a pardon of what knows  
_ _and climb up in the air).  
_ _you push and you pull, and you tell yourself no—  
_ _it's like when you lie down, the veins grow in slow._

.

**iv.**

Gorgug hears him come back on their third day of research.

It’s not like he has exceptionally good hearing or anything, but he has developed a knack over the years for listening out for creatures smaller than him, which basically includes ninety percent of the residents of Elmville. It’s just something you pick up when you’re 6’4 and your parents could quite literally get crushed if you stepped on them.

So Gorgug spends his days half-heartedly looking up spells with Adaine, Fig, and, surprisingly, Kristen, who he’s pretty sure is missing Tracker and looking for a distraction. Fabian hangs around for moral support, and Ayda flits between sparring with him and reading books at a speed that makes even Adaine jealous.

Gorgug mostly teaches himself stupid pen tricks and helps Ayda fix her stance whenever Fabian knocks her over.

He’s in the middle of a particularly complicated pen trick when he hears the faintest pop of someone Teleporting inside the building. His pen falls on the table with a clatter that absolutely nobody reacts to.

“I’m gonna…” he says lamely, slipping out the door before anyone thinks to pay attention.

Maybe it’s not the kind of high school experience he should be having, but Gorgug feels an odd sense of confidence as he walks to the principal’s office. Confident that he’ll find Aguefort there, sure, but also confident that he’s in a good position to negotiate for Aguefort’s help.

The door is cracked open when he gets there; Aguefort is inside mumbling to himself amidst light thumps and crashes, as if tossing things into a suitcase.

“Hey.” Gorgug manages to knock twice before he’s blown away from the door, hitting his back on the wall opposite. He shakes off the impact and stands up, undeterred.

Aguefort flings the door open with a loud yell. “What! Who is it! What are you doing!”

“Whoa.” Gorgug holds his hands up to block his chest. “It’s just me, Professor.”

Aguefort drops his shoulders. “Ah, Gorgug. Of course it’s you.” He sneers a little and turns back into his office, opening the door for Gorgug to follow. “What can I help you with? What are you—hang on.” He furrows his brows. “It _is_ summer break, yes? What are you doing in school?”

“Well, it’s kind of a long story,” Gorgug sighs. “Riz is missing and we think he’s stuck on a planet that’s a huge maze.”

Aguefort frowns. “A maze planet? I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

“Oh. Really?”

“Gorgug, I’m pretty sure I know myself well enough to remember if I’ve heard of a maze planet.”

“Yeah, see, I don’t know—”

“Here, let’s look.” Aguefort flicks his wrist and the room is full of spinning planets of varying sizes and colors. “What is this planet called?”

“Knot.”

As soon as Gorgug says the word, it materializes into wispy letters, bouncing between the illusory planets. Each one it touches sparkles gold before fading back to its original color. Gorgug watches, mesmerized, as it ricochets faster and faster, lighting the room in a haze of golden glitter.

Eventually it runs through every planet and each one looks the same as it did when Aguefort summoned all of them.

“I’m sorry, Gorgug,” Aguefort says, clapping his hands together as the planets disappear, “but that’s not quite right.”

“Okay. It is though? That’s what Ayda told us, at least.”

“Ayda?”

“Yeah, um. Okay. Well.” Gorgug steeples his fingers under his chin. “Does that name....mean anything to you?”

“I don’t think so, my boy. Should it?”

This time it’s Gorgug’s turn to frown. Out of all the possibilities they’d considered for this whole situation—and there had been some _wild_ ones thrown out—Aguefort not knowing who Ayda was hadn’t even made the list.

“Probably, yeah,” he finally says, “considering we’re pretty sure she’s your daughter.”

“Someone showed up out of the blue and told you your friend Riz is stuck on a maze planet called Knot that doesn’t exist, and also she happens to be my daughter?”

“More like—well, it’s more complicated than that—yeah, that’s basically it.”

“Impossible.”

“She’s half-phoenix,” Gorgug adds.

Aguefort tugs on his beard for a few long moments. At one point he almost seems to blush, which is just about the grossest thing Gorgug has probably ever seen. “Half-phoenix, you say,” he mutters. “Hm.”

“Yeah.”

“As you know, I’ve...had a relationship with a phoenix, but I can’t say that any children have ever come from it.”

“Okay, well.” Gorgug shrugs and smiles a little. “Congratulations?”

“You _have_ to be mistaken,” Aguefort insists.

“She’s just down the hall,” Gorgug replies, gesturing behind him in the vague area of the library. “You can come see for yourself, if you want.”

“No! Certainly not; no need to get her hopes up. But I could—catch me quickly, Gorgug!”

The words barely sink in before his eyes turn silver and his shoulders slump, threatening to tip him over completely. Gorgug rushes forward and scoops him up before he hits the ground.

There are so many cooler things Gorgug could be doing over summer break than holding the unconscious body of his eccentric principal, and yet here he is.

“I’m making Kristen deal with him next time,” he mutters to himself.

Aguefort is only out for a few moments longer, waking up with a snort. He jumps out of Gorgug’s arms immediately, clapping his hands together.

“Okay! Well, she’s definitely my daughter,” he says. The corner of his left eye starts to twitch. “No idea how that happened, and I’ve definitely never seen her before, so that’s going to be quite the mystery to solve. She looks like she’s getting on quite nicely with the rest of your little group.” He rests his hands on his hips and exhales loudly, surveying the mess around them. “Did you need anything else from me, my boy?”

“Wh—did you really just Scry on her instead of walking a few rooms over and popping your head in?”

“Absolutely,” Aguefort nods.

“Okay.” Gorgug covers his eyes with his fingers and takes several calming breaths. “Okay, this is—I feel like there’s a more productive way to deal with this.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“I can’t believe _you’re_ in charge of an entire school.”

“Oh, Gorgug,” Aguefort laughs, “some days I can’t believe it either. To tell you the truth, I never really wanted to be.”

“That doesn’t make it better!” Gorgug almost shouts. “Okay. Ayda aside, we are really trying to get Riz back from wherever he is and we’re kind of hitting a wall, so if you have any ideas…”

“Now _that_ is an endeavor worthy of my help!” He waves his hands and books fly off of his shelves, seemingly at random, settling in a haphazard pile on his desk.

Gorgug bends over to check the titles on the few spines he can see— _Magical Un-Realism_ ; _So You’ve Created a Paradox_ ; _Quantum Arcanology for Dummies_ —and sighs.

“This is some more of your time bullshit, isn’t it?”

Aguefort flips open the first book in the pile with a flourish. “My dear boy, I think that’s exactly what this is.”

/

Nothing’s changed when he gets back to the library, which makes sense considering it’s only been about ten minutes. Maybe it’s just a side effect of Aguefort’s time bullshit that every encounter with him seems to last forever.

Ayda is sitting at the table with Adaine and Fig; Gorgug drags a chair to the end opposite them so he can stretch his legs.

“Okay, so, don’t freak out,” he starts.

“Ooh, what happened?”

“What did you do?”

“What does that mean.”

Gorgug looks at the three of them looking at him—Ayda, genuinely puzzled; Adaine, a stern crinkle to her brow; Fig, leaning in conspiratorially—and shakes his head. He turns his attention to Ayda.

“The other night, you seemed to get...upset when we mentioned that we might know your dad, so I just want to make sure you’re okay before I start talking about him. Or you can tell me not to talk about him, and that’s cool, too.”

Ayda starts tapping two fingers on the edge of the table. “Thank you for your concern. I think I’ll be okay if you bring him up; Fabian and I have had many insightful conversations about the disappointments of fathers.”

“Okay. That’s cool. Well, he’s here. I just talked to him and gave him a brief rundown of everything that’s going on. He’s in his office right now looking up some stuff about how to help Riz.”

“How to help _Riz_?” Fig scoffs. Adaine scoffs right back and Fig rolls her eyes. “Okay, I mean, sure we all want to get Riz back. But we’re talking to him a couple times a day, and he’s got Ayda’s tower to hide in. Meanwhile, Aguefort has a daughter he didn’t even know about _right here_ , and he’s not pursuing any kind of relationship or even trying to talk to her.”

“Most of that is just Aguefort being a jerk, I think,” Gorgug interrupts before Fig can really get rolling. “But he was also looking at all of his time magic books, so maybe there’s something he really doesn’t want to mess with.”

Adaine drops her head in her hands and threads her fingers up through her hair. “Why does _this_ guy get to be the preeminent scholar of chronomancy?”

Ayda sits up straighter; her fingers tap in a smooth wave rather than independent hits. “Chronomancy? My father invented chronomancy?”

Adaine shakes her head. “No one really _invents_ a whole school of magic. More like he just...opened a door.”

“That’s kind of all he does,” Fig adds.

“I’ve read several books about chronomancy,” Ayda continues. “It’s an extremely complex school of magic; I haven’t been able to master a spell in any of my lives.”

“You’ve read chronomancy books?” Adaine blurts. “Where did you get them?”

“In my first tower. Sometimes scattered around Knot. I’ve found lots of things in my excursions; that’s how I taught myself magic.”

“Were any of them written by Arthur Aguefort?”

Ayda cranes her head to think. “No, but he was cited as a primary source in one of them.”

Fig taps the end of her pencil against an open book. “Something’s fucky about this,” she grumbles.

Adaine nods. “I agree.”

“Oh, just for full transparency,” Gorgug adds, “we talked about your planet, too. Aguefort said that your planet doesn’t exist, or that it’s not called Knot.”

Ayda stares at him. “Of course it’s not.”

He stares right back. “Right. It’s Knot.”

“Yes.”

“But he couldn’t find it.”

“What was his method of searching?”

“I don’t know, he did a spell? I’m not a wizard, but there were a bunch of floating planets and he bounced the word ‘Knot’ around looking for the one it matched, I guess? But it never landed on anything.”

“That makes perfect sense.”

“But it’s where you come from,” Gorgug frowns. “It exists.”

“Yes.”

“And it’s Knot.”

“It’s Knot,” Ayda says slowly, “and it’s not.”

“Okay, are you two agreeing on something?” Fig asks.

Gorgug scrunches his fingers into his temples. “I don’t _know_!”

“Okay, okay, okay!” Adaine interjects. “I think what Ayda is saying is that _she_ calls the planet Knot, but that might not be what we call it, which is why Aguefort couldn’t find it with whatever spell he was using.”

“Yes,” Ayda nods. “One hundred percent, absolutely correct.”

Adaine smiles. “Thank you. And while that’s very interesting and weird, I think that’s a problem for Aguefort to solve. What _I’d_ love to focus on is why and how so many things from Spyre ended up with you.” She closes the textbook in front of her and opens up a notebook, pen poised as she addresses Ayda. “Do you think you can remember some of the things you’ve collected over the years?”

“I can do more than that,” Ayda promises. She closes her eyes and reaches into her pocket, pulling out a very small chest. As she balances it on her palm and breathes deeply, the chest begins to glow and shake—not enough to dislodge it from her hand, but enough that it looks really fucking cool. After a few seconds, there’s a quiet crack and thud as a larger version of that chest appears behind Fig’s chair.

Ayda bursts into tears.

“Ayda?” Short of vaulting over the table, Fig is at Ayda’s side so quickly it reminds Gorgug of Riz. She rests a hand on Ayda’s shoulder. “What’s up; are you okay?”

“Yes,” she says softly, then she shakes her head. “No, I apologize. That was a lie.” She touches the tiny chest, rolling it over in her hand. “Every moment I’ve been here has been so...so wonderful and so unlike my life on Knot, that I thought—it’s irrational; it would be very irrational to believe that Knot wasn’t real, that the experiences I’ve lived were little more than a dream. But Elmville _is_ a dream; it’s so nice and easy to be here. Recalling this chest and having unequivocal proof that Knot and Elmville exist at the same time—I apologize for the outburst.” She wipes away tears with her free hand; when it slides back to her lap, Fig immediately laces their fingers together. “This isn’t big enough to contain everything I’ve found, but it should provide a decent start.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Fig soothes. “Why don’t we take a break? We can go sit on the roof or something.”

“Okay.”

Fig guides Ayda up from her chair and very deliberately doesn’t look at Adaine. She pats her pockets for her crystal, cloves, and lighter. “Hey Gorgug,” she says with forced nonchalance, “can we, um, maybe have a jam session pretty soon? I think I’ve got a couple of songs waiting to come out.”

“I’ll bet,” Adaine teases.

“Yeah, sure,” Gorgug replies. “Sounds great.”

Fig and Ayda walk off talking about music, leaving Gorgug and Adaine to stare at the chest and their probably-useless pile of books.

“It would be a bad idea to look in that without her, right?”

Adaine groans and crosses her arms. “Yes.”

Fig and Ayda are gone for a full hour. Gorgug spends every minute of it watching Adaine like a hawk.

//

Ayda warns Riz against going to the forest, so of course that means the right pillar to get him home will be there. But he listens anyway, because Ayda knows how this planet works and he doesn’t.

He packs himself a bag of food, grabs the right map and a pen, and sets off for the field.

It becomes clear almost immediately just how accurate Ayda’s map is. Unfortunately, the field corresponds to a relatively unexplored portion of the map, and Ayda’s annotations run out about a mile before the place where Riz thinks the pillar should be. Even with that, he’s able to make his way through the maze and successfully avoid bears, a swarm of wasps, and what looks like a particularly poisonous patch of mushrooms. Ayda has written notes next to each obstacle, each one more frustrated than the last, which might explain why she hasn’t revisited this part of the maze.

Riz gets to the end of her map and stops to fuel up. He climbs up a harmless-looking tree and settles against the trunk, digging the now-warm bag of food from his pocket.

The weather isn’t awful, considering he’s stranded, and nothing’s really tried to kill him yet. The sun isn’t as big as he’s used to, and the planet seems to have an omnipresent haze above the treeline. He wouldn’t want to live here, but as far as places to get stuck go? It’s not the worst.

He lingers for a little longer than he probably should, but the breeze starts to pick up and there’s something relaxing about listening to it rustle through the trees. Still, Riz isn’t one to dawdle, so after about an hour he wipes his hands on his pants and jumps down.

He rolls Ayda’s map out on the ground and tries to superimpose the routes he’s already taken over what kind of layout might be waiting for him down this path. Assuming that most mazes are relatively symmetrical, it should be a safe bet to just take the opposite turn relative to the portion of the maze he traversed on his way to Ayda’s tower. If he really wants to be smart about it (and he does), he’ll mark down each turn he takes anyway, if he ends up having to backtrack.

Riz finds a stick and marks an X at the base of the tree, just in case.

The path is boring enough for the first ten minutes that Riz lets himself walk. His socks are basically memories at this point, but it feels too much like defeat to actually take them off. At least if he walks, there’s less chance of tripping over the pathetic flops of cotton they’ve become.

“Whoa.”

Riz stops abruptly, looking between his map and what’s in front of him. Or rather, what might be at the bottom of the very large, very deep hole in front of him.

“Well, shit.”

He gets as close as he can, and then he gets ten feet closer. When nothing pops out to attack, he darts to the edge of the hole, crouches down, and peers in.

It’s easily two hundred feet deep—created naturally rather than crafted, but still intimidating. A pillar sits at the bottom; Riz can’t see the color that well, but it looks enough like the one he encountered that he’s willing to bet it follows the same function.

He scoots back to think, resting his arms over his knees.

“Okay,” he speculates. “The pillar that I found sent a rock through to Elmville but only once. Presumably the one that Ayda touched also sent her to Elmville, since that’s where she is now, and somehow that process sent me here and spat me out by a different pillar. If I threw something at that pillar, possibly myself, it would end up in Elmville and potentially send something back with it.” He sighs and scratches at the back of his neck. “The smart thing to do would be to wait for Adaine or Ayda to message me and throw something— _not_ myself—at it when they can observe the effects.”

He scratches his neck again, desperately wanting to do the stupid thing.

Riz kicks at the ground instead, sending a stick flying forward. He watches as it bounces—once, twice in the short grass—before hitting the edge of the crater and arching forward. Riz scrambles to follow it, leaning over just in time to see it fall down the hole and strike the top of the sphere before settling at the base.

“Fuck,” he spits. He throws a few more sticks; they all rebound harmlessly off of it.

He groans and lies on his back. Nothing to do but wait after all.

_“Talked to Aguefort finally,”_ Adaine finally messages. _“He’s definitely Ayda’s dad, and looking into time bullshit to help you. That’s verbatim, by the way. Hope you’re good?”_

_“Of course this is Aguefort’s fault_ ,” Riz grumbles. _“I’m fine. Learned some stuff about possible teleporters. Can Ayda message in five minutes? Thanks for working so hard.”_

Riz cycles through a few iterations of a twenty-five-word message waiting for Ayda.

She crackles into his head exactly five minutes later. _“I’m sorry you can’t initiate these messages. Adaine has tasked me with asking you to keep an eye out for Solesian artifacts, or anything familiar.”_

Riz barely pays attention to her message. _“Pillars contain two Teleports,”_ he says quickly, _“between Elmville and Knot. Don’t replenish, return location inconsistent. Four within 5 miles of tower. What switched with rock?”_

_“Coffee...mug_ ,” Ayda answers, like she has no idea what those words mean, separately or together. Which is probably true, when Riz thinks about it. _“From the werewolf. You’re very impressive. What do you mean ‘return location’? I look forward to meeting you.”_

_“What I think is,”_ Riz says slowly, _“two things switch places once, maybe two things travel one-way twice? The things that switch places pick random locations to land.”_

_“Fascinating. Incredible. A wonder to study. When we eventually switch places again, hopefully we can engineer the process with more precision.”_

Riz spends so long thinking about that he forgets to answer.

//

_while you were sleeping, i thought of you—  
_ _oceans and distance—and time went on  
_ _as we were dreaming, praying the answers  
_ _will come in time to see us through._

**v.**

.

“Aydaaa,” Kristen sing-songs as she slides into the living room of Mordred Manor.

Ayda looks up from her place on the couch. “Kristen Applebees. It’s very fun to say your name.”

“Thank you! Yours is, too—Ayda Aguefort. Nice and alliterative.”

“Aguefort, because of my elusive father?”

“Oh.” Kristen twists her hair into a ponytail, thinking. “I guess, yeah, that’s generally how names work here, but if you don’t want to be associated with him, that’s cool, too.”

“Would it be frowned upon, to spurn the association?”

Kristen shrugs. “It kinda depends on the situation, I guess. I don’t really get along with my parents but I don’t know what else I would want to be called. ‘Kristen’ by itself feels kinda incomplete, so I’ll keep it for now; I can always change it later. Plus, like you said, it’s super fun.”

“I’d like to make an observation,” Ayda says, blinking, “but I don’t want to offend you.”

Kristen laughs loudly. “It’s pretty hard to offend me; I wouldn’t worry about it too much.”

“Wonderful. You and your friends seem to have gone through...a lot of trauma.”

“Hm, yeah, that’s definitely true.”

“Collectively, more than me, but we might be evenly matched on an individual level.”

“Okay. It’s definitely not a competition, though.”

“No, of course not.” Ayda puts down the book she was reading. “I certainly wouldn’t want to _win_ , even if we were competing. But I am envious of how sensibly you all seem to be handling it.”

Kristen smiles. “Ayda, can I tell you a secret?”

“I would be honored.”

“I have no _fucking_ idea what I’m doing or how I’m handling it.” She flops down on the loveseat. “My girlfriend, Tracker, left a few days ago with one of our other friends to go, like, fix her religion and have a personal journey all at once, and if we didn’t have this mystery to solve, I’d probably be wallowing in my room with a bucket of shrimp nachos.”

“A bucket of…”

Kristen waves a hand. “It’s not important, just some really good comfort food. What I’m trying to say is we’ve been through a bunch of stuff, and you never really know how to go through it until you have to. We all look like we’re handling it okay because we have each other and some of our families to help us do it. I’m sorry that you never got that chance.”

“You are a magic user.”

Kristen crinkles her brows. “Is that a question?”

“No.” Ayda shakes her head. “I’ve found that, even if I miscast a spell, there’s a certain comfort I feel with magic—a kind of familiarity in the face of failure. Talking with you...evokes a similar sensation **.** ”

Kristen smiles, genuinely brightened. “Hey, thanks. And you know, I literally am a magic user; I could talk to my god if you had any questions you want answered.”

“I have many questions that fall into that category.”

“Okay yeah, that maybe wasn’t the _best_ way to phrase it, but—I know this spell where I can ask three questions and get answers for all of them. They have to be yes or no questions and sometimes the answers are a little fuzzy, but it’s helpful to have that outside perspective, I guess.”

“Do you need my questions now?”

“No, no. Take as much time as you need to think about them. I just wanted to let you know the offer’s there.”

“Thank you; I appreciate that.”

“And, you know—” Kristen stretches an arm across the back of her chair, crosses her right ankle over her left knee, and misses Tracker, who, if she were here, would be winking about how gay Kristen looks right now. “I said that we all get through our shit because we’re there to support each other. Sometimes that means a cuddle pile after tough stuff and sometimes it’s a hand to hold when you’re in the middle of it. We can be that for you, too, if you want.”

“You want to hold my hand?”

“I mean, Fig might but—what I really meant is that if you want to talk to Aguefort but you didn’t want to do it alone, we’d totally go with you.”

“Oh. It’s not necessary—”

“Yeah, no pressure; just again, we’re here if you need us.”

“—for everyone to come,” Ayda finishes. “But it is...very nice, not to be alone.”

“It is, yeah. Adaine and Gorgug are pretty busy at the library, I think, and Fabian’s probably with the Hangman or something, but I think Fig’s upstairs if you wanted one more person?”

For a second, the fire in Ayda’s pupils expands to fill both of her eyes. “I would like that very much.”

Kristen tries not to grin too widely. “Hang tight; I’ll go get her.”

She jogs out of the room and up the stairs before Ayda can say anything else.

Fig’s on her bed, eyes closed as she lightly strums her guitar, when Kristen walks in.

“Hey.” Fig starts and almost throws her guitar across the room. “You know, if you got a door, I wouldn’t scare you so much.”

“You’d find another way, I’m sure,” Fig retorts.

“Yeah, probably. Anyway, Ayda and I are gonna go talk to Aguefort if you want to come.”

Fig sits up straight and lets her guitar slide to the floor. “You’re gonna talk to Aguefort? Is she okay; do you need—” She clears her throat. “Sounds great. Let me know if you need some back-up.”

“Fig.”

“What.”

“Whoa, that was, like, a really good Ayda impression.”

Fig scowls. “I said one word.”

“Yeah, but it was the _way_ you said it; you’ve really got a lock on her intonations and stuff—”

“What were you gonna say, Kristen?”

“Oh, yeah.” This time Kristen doesn’t try to hide her grin at all. “Ayda specifically asked that you come with.”

“Oh. Cool.” Fig lights her fingers up with small flames, smudges them out on her skirt, and uses the remaining ash to touch up her eyeshadow. “Yeah, I’ll come with, I guess.”

“You _guess_ ,” Kristen smirks.

Fig tightens the laces on her boots and smacks Kristen on the shoulder as she stands up. “Shut up.”

Kristen backs up and holds her hands up defensively. “Hey, I think it’s great. I’ve gotta bask in whatever queer activity I can get these days since my favorite one just went to Fallinel for who-knows-how long.”

Fig softens as they make their way back downstairs. “Does it suck, not having Tracker here?”

“Abso _lutely_.”

Fig scuffs at a step before jumping down the next two. “Do you think—I shouldn’t say anything, right, because I don’t also want it to suck for me.”

Kristen stops and feels her heart break a little bit. “Aw man, I was—I was gonna keep razzing you but that’s actually really sweet.”

“No, go back to razzing me; I don’t care about anything.” Fig kicks the railing.

Ayda is waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs, talons clicking lightly against the wood. Kristen watches the way both she and Fig circle around each other, not getting too close but clearly, desperately wanting to.

She smiles and sends Fig a message, getting it out quickly before Fig and Ayda distract themselves.

_If you say something, maybe she won’t leave._

Fig doesn’t reply.

/

Two minutes into meeting Aguefort, when no one’s said anything, Kristen thinks this might have been a bad idea.

Aguefort keeps looking up from his desk like he _might_ say something, and every time he does, Ayda sits up straighter. But nothing’s happened yet and there’s only so much awkward silence Kristen can take.

“Professor Aguefort, maybe you can tell us what you’ve found out about how to help Riz,” she suggests.

“Yes!” he exclaims. “I could indeed tell you what I’ve found out, except that I haven’t really found out anything.”

Fig scoffs. “Figures.”

“Hang on, we’ve learned a bunch of stuff from talking to Riz; how is it possible that you haven’t when you’re so old and powerful?” Kristen asks.

“You have the advantage of speaking with Mr. Gukgak,” Aguefort answers, “while I’m consulting textbooks in an attempt to find a planet that doesn’t exist.”

“It does exist,” Ayda objects quietly. “We proved the other day that it undeniably exists.”

“Oh? How?”

Ayda balances a small chest on her hand; shortly after, a larger version of it appears at their feet. She kneels down to open its locks.

“These are my possessions from home,” she explains, lifting the lid. “Some of them, at least. I’ve found them over the years near my many towers.”

Aguefort stands up, leaning over his desk to peer at the box. “May I…?”

Ayda nods once and steps back, closer to Fig’s chair, tapping her fingers against the back of it.

Arthur pulls items from the chest—a few leather-bound books, one very worn scroll, various vials of thick liquids. He stops searching once he gets to a ruby of a truly outrageous size.

“Where did you get this?” he whispers.

“It was at the bottom of a well. I scooped it up with a bucket before I learned how to create my own food and water.”

“Do you recognize it?” Kristen prompts.

Aguefort looks at the ruby just a little longer. He clears his throat very loudly and, with some reluctance, puts it back. “That’s mine,” he says simply, “or at least it was. I haven’t seen it in quite some time; it went missing over half a century ago.”

“Okay. That’s weird,” Fig frowns. “But also, like, pretty solid evidence right? That Ayda is your daughter and you definitely had something to do with all of this?”

“Most assuredly,” Aguefort mutters. “Ayda, did you ever meet your mother?”

“No,” Ayda answers simply. “Before I came here, I rarely wondered about my parents.”

“Really?”

“I’ve raised myself five times. It stopped being relevant after the third, I think.”

Fig looks like she’s either going to cry or set fire to Aguefort’s office. Kristen grabs her hand and drags her toward the door before she can make a decision.

“We’re gonna give you two some time to talk, okay? We’ll be right outside.”

“Unless you want us to stay,” Fig quickly interjects.

Ayda turns to look at Fig and smiles, relaxing her shoulders just for a moment. “Thank you, Fig; the knowledge that you’re within earshot is comfort enough. I think—I will be fine.”

Kristen pushes Fig out the door and immediately stands in front of it.

“Kristen!”

“Hey, listen, I get it, okay? I’m gay; I _promise_ I get it. But some stuff you just gotta do on your own.”

Fig kicks the door.

“Stupid,” she mumbles.

“You’ve gotta stop kicking shit.”

“This is what all bisexual punk rockstars do,” she mumbles, leaning her forehead against the wall. “Don’t invalidate my queer experience.”

Kristen gasps in mock-offense. “I can’t believe you would even joke about that; how dare you.” She leans against the wall next to Fig and crosses her arms. “But seriously, do you wanna, like...talk about anything? I feel like I’m still processing whatever the fuck happened this year, maybe you are, too.”

Fig sighs and turns around. “I’m gonna be processing that shit for years, I feel like. I hope next year nothing happens to any of my parents.” She swallows and bounces her left boot off of her right. “Parent stuff sucks.”

“Mm, word.”

“And it’s like, I know it’s been, like, four days so maybe this is kind of crazy, but—I just think about how hard the Nightmare Forest was and how lonely I felt because all of my parents kept fucking up or getting taken away, and how much better it might have been if Ayda was there. You know,” she coughs, “for both of us.”

“Yeah, totally. You’d have someone to snuggle up with in the van, make those cold nights warmer…”

“Shut up; that’s not even what I mean. Just, like, maybe we could have freed Gortholax earlier without having to ask Cassandra, or maybe Gilear wouldn’t have died literally fifteen times, or a bunch of other stuff. She’s over a hundred years old and she’s got fire-wings; you _know_ she can do some really cool shit.”

Kristen nods. “Probably, yeah. And then she’d be here, too, and, you know, not going through all these hard things on her own.”

“Sure, that too,” Fig says like she hadn’t been thinking about it.

“It’s not crazy, by the way,” Kristen assures. “It’s basically a queer woman’s rite of passage to move really fast in your first relationship.”

Fig blushes. “We’re not in a relationship.”

“Yet,” Kristen smiles. Fig looks like she’s going to start yelling so Kristen holds open her arms. “You wanna hug it out?”

Fig rolls her eyes, steps forward, and angles her head so Kristen doesn’t get a face full of horns.

“Thanks,” she mumbles into Kristen’s shoulder.

“Now we just need Adaine to come out and my work will be done.”

Fig pinches her stomach.

They hug for longer than usual—because they’re in a deserted school in the summer and no one can see Fig being sentimental, Kristen knows—breaking apart when there’s movement on the other side of the door.

Ayda bursts through the doorway, eyes wild, the flames of her hair licking upward higher than they have in the time she’s been here.

“Friends, hello!” she exclaims. “Arthur is my father. My planet is real and he knows where it is. He performed an extraordinary piece of magic on me to use the traces of Knot still lingering on my body to track my home through time and space. We know which quadrant of the universe it’s located in and we should be able to teleport there tomorrow, provided that Riz can direct us to the appropriate meeting spot.”

“Whoa. That was fast.”

“Are you okay?” Fig asks. “You seem a little keyed up.”

“There was a telepathic element to the spell,” Ayda says. “It seems to have imparted a few of Arthur’s tendencies onto me; he says it will only last as long as the spell does, which is unfortunately a full twenty four hours.” Her eyes dart around the hallway and she bounces her weight between her feet. “I didn’t know anxiety could feel this...positive.”

“I don’t think that’s anxiety,” Fig grumbles. “Why don’t we go hang at Fabian’s place and you can spar some of it out?”

“An excellent idea.” Ayda looks at Kristen. “This has been a particularly emotional day for me. Would this be an appropriate time to hold hands?”

“What?” It takes a bit for Kristen to connect the dots; Fig glares daggers at her the whole time. “Wow, that’s—” She studies Ayda, feeling her heart break just a little bit. Kristen can totally understand how Fig fell so fast. “Yeah, this is definitely a perfect time for that.”

Ayda positions herself in the middle of Kristen and Fig.

She holds both of their hands as they walk to Fabian’s house, but she reaches for Fig’s first.

//

Riz is very good at making piles. He is not so good at making maps.

He combs through what he can reach in Ayda’s house to find things that look familiar; his pile is maybe smaller than Adaine would have wanted, but the more Riz looks around, the more he thinks almost _everything_ in here might be Solesian and it’s just that he can’t recognize what they are. There are a few books in Elvish, a piece of really dated crystal tech, and A Beginner Wizard’s Component Kit, which he’s definitely seen lining the shelves of fantasy-Target.

But even that gets a little boring after a while, so Riz files away all of his questions and goes out to search for the fourth pillar.

It’s a similar situation as the one in the ground—the map isn’t built out to include it, and this time Riz has to do a lot more guesswork about which turns to take that will get him there. He’s slower about it because he’s making an effort to accurately mark them on the map as well. Ayda’s system of notation is easy to understand and replicate, though Riz lacks every ounce of the elegance in her writing.

By the end of the day, he’s got a route mapped out maximized for time, speed, and ease of access. His proportions are a little off on the map, but he measured distance with a few cleverly-sized sticks, so he’s got some kind of coordinate system to pass on, at least.

He spends the hours waiting for his daily message looking for a needle and thread, in some hopes of repairing the truly embarrassing state of his clothes.

“ _Riz, we’ve got it!_ ” Adaine’s voice is loud and excited in his ear, jolting him from a state of half-sleep. “ _Ayda persuaded Aguefort to Teleport us, we just need you to tell us where to meet you, as accurately as possible._ ”

“ _Tell Ayda,_ ” he replies immediately, “ _past the hills northwest of tower, between river and easternmost edge of forest. 2.3 miles beyond edge of map. Miss you guys.”_

Riz doesn’t get a lick of sleep.

//

“Alright, now, there is a _slight_ chance that we land far away from the spot Riz has so helpfully pointed out, or perhaps we might not reach our destination at all.”

Five Solesians and an alien all burst into a stream of protests.

“Okay!” Aguefort yells over all of them. “I’m not saying it’s _going_ to happen, I’m just preparing you that it _could_ happen. Everyone deserves to have all the facts, though this is far too simple a spell for me to ever fuck up.”

“Why do I get the feeling you say that about a lot of stuff?”

“Oh, Mr. Thistlespring,” Aguefort laughs. “Not a _lot_. Anyway!” He claps his hands together. “Nothing left to do but go; are you all ready?”

They all grumble some form of _yes_. Ayda reaches her hand to bump against Fig’s.

“Wait, hold on,” Kristen interrupts. “I just want to say something. You know, we’ve all been through a lot of shit this year, and it sounds like most of it was Aguefort’s fault.”

“It’s gonna get inspiring soon,” Gorgug whispers.

Kristen waves a hand to shush him. “We had to get the crown of the Nightmare King back and that was awful, and it sounds like Ayda’s life has just constantly been awful all the time.”

“Real soon,” Fig adds, “it’s gonna get inspiring real soon.”

“But we’re here now,” Kristen continues, “and we’re united, and that Nightmare King is now a really powerful and cool god. And maybe they don’t know what they’re doing, but neither do any of us, which kind of means that we can do anything. So, let’s go! We’ve got this.”

There’s a halfhearted chorus of approval as she finishes speaking.

“Thank you, Ms. Applebees!” Aguefort proclaims. “Indeed; let’s _do_ this!”

He crowds them all together, whispers words in a language Kristen’s never heard before, and closes his eyes as silvery light fills the room. Kristen’s heart speeds up in anticipation.

The light cracks. Thunder roils louder and louder and the air in the room grows impossibly black.

“Oh, shit,” Aguefort mumbles.

Then they all disappear.

//

_hold out for the ones you know will love you;  
hide out from the ones you know will love you, too.  
(dark, you can’t come soon enough for me)._

**vi.**

.

When they all impact with tightly-packed dirt, Aguefort is nowhere to be seen. In fact, they’ve all been thrown in different directions. Gorgug and Adaine are annoyingly on the other side of a river; south of them, Fig and Kristen are trapped by mounds of dirt that seem too precise to be accidental, and Fabian and Ayda are to the west. Gorgug jumps up, dusts his hands off, and squints to take it their situation.

“Oh, shit,” he blurts. “Fabian and Ayda have some huge wolves surrounding them.”

“I mean I’d love to help,” Adaine says, getting up herself, “but we’re not doing so hot either.” She gestures to the river and the vaguely-threatening, large black shape on the other side of it.

“Sure, yeah, that makes sense.” He watches Fabian and Ayda start to engage with the wolves. They both get some good hits in but they’re just so fucking _big_. Gorgug winces as one of them bites Ayda and knocks her to the ground.

“Gorgug.”

“Hm?”

“If you jump us across the river, I think we can do some damage to whatever that _thing_ is waiting for us.”

“Yeah, sure.” He clicks his boots, gesturing for Adaine to climb onto his back while they charge up, and then in one single leap he bounds over the water, skidding to a stop.

“Is that a fucking _scorpion?!_ ” he yells. He goes into a rage anyway, just in case it is.

“Yeah, a really big one!” Adaine yells back. She pushes him to the side and throws out her hands; scorching fire shoots out of her palms and whizzes past Gorgug’s face. The scorpion screeches, skittering around to face them.

Gorgug smiles and pants with adrenaline.

Fight’s on.

.

“Fabian, we’re here. Are you unconscious or is this confusion temporary? Do you need a healing potion.”

Fabian shakes his head and pushes Ayda’s hands from his shoulders. “I’m fine,” he groans. “Your dad sucks at Teleporting, by the way.”

“I take no offense to that, as I haven’t yet built up a sense of pride or shame for his character. I do wish I knew the spell, though. I would have been wildly more successful.”

“Yeah, sure.” He sits up fully and clocks two hulking shapes moving deliberately behind Ayda. “Hey Ayda,” he says, taking care to sound casual, “you get a lot of wolves in these parts?”

“I know they live around here,” she answers, “though I’ve taken care not to run into them myself.”

“Okay. Cool. Well, I don’t think you have that option today.”

Fabian sprints at one of them just as they move to attack; Ayda turns around to watch him and fires a barrage of missiles at the other one. Both wolves take the hits and continue advancing. In her excitement, Ayda moves too close to one of them and provokes an attack; it lunges at her shoulder and drives her to the ground.

Fabian sets his feet, grips Fandrangor tight, and smirks.

.

“I’m gonna kill him,” Fig wheezes.

“Aguefort?”

“Duh.” She gets up and holds an arm out to pull Kristen up. Instead, Kristen almost pulls her down again; Fig always forgets how strong she is. “Do you see him anywhere?”

“Nope.”

They both stand and survey the area. Fig narrows her eyes at the group of hills in front of them. They’re all weirdly around the same size, and a huge swath of moss spreads all the way across.

Kristen walks toward it anyway.

“Kristen, wait!” Fig yells, but, as it usually goes with Kristen, it’s too little, too late.

The moss rustles and shakes when Kristen gets close enough and it whips out a thick tendril, coiling it around her stomach and squeezing her even closer.

“What the fuck!” Kristen yells. The moss doesn’t respond to any of the slaps she lands on it; instead, it reels her in, coming one step short of swallowing her.

“Oh, come _on_!” Fig groans. She rolls her eyes and casts Shatter at whatever that plant monster is. It recoils and Fig watches as the branches holding Kristen seem to loosen. “Kristen, you’re a gay icon!” Fig cries out in a desperate attempt at inspiration.

Kristen gasps. “Thank you!” She seems to tingle with beatific light, just for a moment, and the vines fall away. “No sweat,” she gloats, brushing her arms off.

She lingers just a little too close for just a little too long, and the vines suck her in again.

“God damn it,” Fig grumbles.

.

They’re here.

Riz knows because an obscenely large crack of thunder splinters the air, and he actually looks around to check that the planet hasn’t split in half.

It’s silent enough to get in one sigh of relief, and then Riz hears it.

Riz has heard monsters roar before; there were more than enough in the Nightmare King’s forest to last a lifetime. This is like nothing he’s ever heard—part lizard, part lion, with an undercurrent of grinding metal, finishing in a hiss. He peeks out from the tree he’s hiding behind and looks toward where he thinks the source of the noise is; nothing is discernible except for a truly gargantuan shape.

Riz thinks of dinosaurs and hopes he’s wrong.

He runs instead toward the humanoid shapes a little to the west, keeping out of sight of whatever animals they’re fighting.

As he gets closer, Fabian’s silver hair glints in the morning sun and Riz swears his heart skips a beat.

He’s never been _so_ glad to see his friends.

//

It’s not quite the Nightmare Forest all over again, but it’s close enough and all of them are so tired of fighting. Ask any of them how the fight went and they’ll give you wildly different answers—

Gorgug and Adaine, preoccupied with fighting a giant scorpion that is wilier than it looks, managing to avoid most of Gorgug’s attacks or at least rebuff them with its thick hide;

Fabian, Ayda, and Riz, backed into a corner by two wolves that are bigger than they have any right to be; they have to heal each other as much as they fight because those teeth are mortally sharp;

Fig and Kristen, taking turns getting absorbed by the world’s angriest shrub—

and a behemoth in the center of it all that they all slowly converge on, a creature that is a T-Rex and isn’t in all the worst ways. It’s impossibly large, or maybe paleontologists have just really underestimated how fucking _terrifying_ dinosaurs really were. Because this thing is huge, _so_ fucking huge, and to top it all off, it’s got eye stalks down its back that keep shooting spells or some kind of effects at them, like some kind of grotesque beholder-dinosaur mutation.

No one ever really admits to it, but they all blame it on Aguefort.

Adaine seems to be its favorite target, getting hit with rays that paralyze and frighten her. Fabian is paralyzed at one point too; Kristen has difficulty moving, and Ayda just straight up falls down unconscious.

As battles go, it’s pretty not-great.

Fig and Kristen are the last to join in the fight against what Riz will later call the Beholdersaurus Rex. By that point, Fabian and Ayda are in a bad way and Riz is almost out of bullets. One of the wolves managed to knock Ayda out before Fabian killed it, and even though Riz managed to stabilize her, she’s not too far from falling unconscious again.

It’s like everything happens in slow motion, in the moments before it all ends—Fabian makes two swift attacks on the Beholdersaurus, using precious seconds at the end to regain some strength; Adaine concentrates and molds a sphere, dripping with sickly green acid that it spits out at the dinosaur; Ayda, under the effect of one of its eyes, lies prone on the ground; Gorgug finally dispatches the scorpion, and Riz lands the killing blow on the second wolf.

Fabian, in a feat of athleticism usually only present in movies, twirls toward the Beholdersaurus, Fandrangor sparkling in his lithe grip, and slices the dinosaur’s neck, landing on his feet as its heavy head thunks to the ground.

Kristen uses her staff to dispel the sleep effect from Ayda, and once Fig is sure none of the enemies are going to get up again, she sprints in Ayda’s direction, mumbling the incantation as she runs.

Ayda stirs as Fig kneels next to her, placing her glowing hands on Ayda’s cheeks.

“Did we do it?” Ayda asks hoarsely, her eyes sliding in and out of focus.

“Yeah, totally,” Fig sniffles, “Fabian killed that thing so hard. Listen, I’m gonna heal you, but can I do something a little unorthodox?”

“Considering I have no basis for comparison,” Ayda rambles goofily, “everything you do is unorthodox. I’ve enjoyed it immensely so far.”

Fig kisses the strength back into her.

Everyone pretends not to see, but Kristen is practically vibrating.

Riz lets everyone else pile on top of him in elated exhaustion.

They’re all bruised and bleeding, the ground is torn up, and the corpses surrounding them will quickly start to smell.

But also: a breeze picks up, the clouds part to reveal a glimpse of the sun, and Riz is within touching distance of most of his favorite people.

They’ve had worse days.

//

Unsurprisingly, they bicker for a while about what to do next.

Fabian, Gorgug, and Fig are in favor of leaving quickly, while Riz, Adaine, and Ayda want to make a trip back to Ayda’s tower. Kristen, ever the pacifist, is along for the ride. Riz thinks the ‘leave now’ crowd will eventually win out, simply because everyone is too tired to walk five miles through a maze.

In the meantime, they sprawl out in the grass, Fig and Ayda separated from everyone else. They’ve been holding hands ever since they kissed and Riz can’t stop looking at them.

“It’s weird, right?” he asks, his chin propped up in his hand.

Kristen points a finger at him. “Homophobic!”

“Oh my god, Kristen, I didn’t mean it like that,” Riz groans. “Just...I don’t think I’ve ever seen Fig like this, all soft and happy. It’s been, like, a week, you know?”

“Yeah, but stuff happened in that week,” Gorgug points out. “Lotta stuff.”

“No shit,” Riz mumbles. “Ayda’s cool, right?”

Five versions of ‘ _so_ cool’ fill the air immediately. Riz feels privately gratified that he came to the same conclusion after only communicating over Sending spells.

The conversation between Fig and Ayda gets heated and they all turn to see Fig dragging a much-taller and sheepish Ayda by the wrist.

“Hey,” she huffs. “Ayda needs convincing that she should come back to Elmville with us.”

“I don’t need convincing, Fig,” Ayda protests, “I just said that maybe—”

“ _Don’t_ even finish that sentence,” Fig warns.

“You should definitely stay in Elmville,” Fabian offers. “Everyone else is hopeless with a sword.”

“Yeah, I definitely just assumed you’d stay with us,” Kristen adds. “You really fit.”

Adaine bites her lip as she mulls it over. “While I’d love to stay here a little longer and investigate your homes, I definitely think Elmville suits you. And there are so many other places we could show you, Ayda; you deserve to live in a world that wants you back.”

“I think you should do whatever feels right for you,” Gorgug says, stretching his legs out. “But it’s been really great having you around. Plus, you know, if you wanted to talk with Aguefort more—”

“Hey, where’d he go, anyway?” Kristen interrupts. “He was supposed to be our ticket home.”

“He gave me a Teleport scroll, just in case,” Adaine answers. “I’d have to really concentrate to use it considering I’m not quite powerful enough to do it on my own, but I should be able to manage it.”

“You have a Scroll of Teleportation?” Ayda asks.

“Yes. Would you be able to use it?”

Ayda shakes her head. “No. But I think, together, we would do very well.”

“Together, then.” Adaine smiles. “Let’s go home.”

//

(Somewhere between worlds, a wizard is meddling with time.

He loses the children immediately, watching them float toward their destination as he falls through moments and memories. Arthur watches as events from his life flicker past his eyes—the first time he cast a spell, the first contribution he made to the field of magic, the first ground broken at Aguefort Academy.

The first time he met the phoenix.

Arthur stops in that one long enough to remember touches and laughter, long fiery nights and the gritty disappointment of ash. He blinks and feels her soft feathers, remembers her musical voice and the songs she sang just for him—

—blinks again and there is a child, a small girl with sharp claws too big for her legs, looking up at him like he has something to offer.

Arthur heaves a deep breath and conjures up that smell, that signature trail she will one day carry into his school.

He offers her an entire planet and, because he knows what she must endure, he curls his fingers until the earth shakes and erupts with impenetrable walls too high for a child to overcome. He breathes and imagines failsafes, columns of stone that will bring her home one day. They sprout from the ground with pops that echo miles away and in his head at the same time. Arthur constructs a single-story tower with just enough provisions to keep her safe, and time takes him away again.

He lands with a thud in his office at the academy. From behind his desk, a younger version of him stares wide-eyed at the apparition he must appear to be.

“What’s this, then?” the him-that-used-to-be exclaims.

“Yes, one moment,” Arthur answers, dashing around the room to grab himself a pen and some paper. “You have to listen to me very carefully.”

“I only listen to myself, as you know.”

Arthur shakes his head. “No time to be flip; this is of the utmost importance.” He scrawls out a list of instructions as quick as he can before the pull of eternity comes back. “You have a daughter who is unfortunately very young and very stranded on a planet by herself, and she must stay there for quite some time. You cannot attempt to save her, but it is _imperative_ that you help her.” He slides the piece of paper across the desk. “This is a list of things to send her and the exact location they must be sent, plus a reminder of how crucial it is that you continue to send things. Fun things, useful things, things that will invigorate a smart mind of any age. Will you agree to this?”

“Yes.”

Arthur modifies his memory.

He worries, for a moment, that he should explain everything once more, but he is whisked away again.

He is whisked away again for a very long time.)

//

_oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?  
_ _can the child within my heart rise above?  
_ _can i sail through the changin’ ocean tides?  
_ _can i handle the seasons of my life?_

**vii.**

.

Elmville is much better than Knot, Ayda learns.

Ayda also learns the “correct” name for her planet, as her father explains it, but it will always be Knot to her. A puzzle she solved eventually, a maze she escaped, but one that sticks anyway, like a permanent lump in her throat.

It sticks now because there is a door, gifted to her by her father, which permanently joins the two worlds. She uses the door quite a lot in the beginning, when she’s still acclimating to her new home. There are many things to bring over; not all of them fit into her new room at Mordred Manor, but there are other places, too, for the ones that don’t.

Ayda’s new family continually makes space for her. On nights when that becomes overwhelming, Ayda opens a door and breathes in the familiar scent of the dirt she used to hate.

Most of those nights, she only has to wait a few moments before a warm hand follows her through.

Ayda loves everything about Elmville. Adaine wants to learn everything Ayda knows and they spend many sleepless nights teaching each other niche things about magic the other one doesn’t know. Ayda finds a research partner in Riz, someone who will listen to every obsessive thought and theory Ayda has about the way the world works. In the days before she buys her own clothes, Ayda wears nothing but the merchandise that Kristen distributes with her deity’s name emblazoned in bright letters and swirls of color. She wears a Cassandra-outfit to a sparring session with Fabian and he takes twenty full minutes to laugh about it. Ayda finds that, rather than feel embarrassed or teased, she laughs right along with him, after a while.

Ayda meets Gorgug’s parents, takes in their precarious lab and the way they look at her with wide, welcoming eyes, and fails to hold in her tears. Digby and Wilma sing a song to calm her down, and then they show her how to infuse fireworks with the Dancing Lights cantrip.

And Fig.

Fig is a revelation, a marvel and a wonder with a laugh that Ayda finds indistinguishable from the music she creates. They spend days exploring the town, in the beginning, eventually building a new library once Ayda learns to exist in the middle. Their nights are full of laughter and friends, a happiness that Ayda had only thought about when she’d read it in a book.

The experience of it is nothing like a novel, though living it makes Ayda want to write one.

She fills books with memories of Fig’s smile and the way her teeth catch the fire in Ayda’s eyes. She writes about Kristen’s loud laughter, Adaine’s solid righteousness, how quickly she becomes acclimated to the way Riz is suddenly just...there, without ever feeling invasive. The stories that Fabian shares stay with him but Ayda sketches his body as they fight, his lithe muscles that flow into his sword and his battle sheet as if they were extensions of him. She gifts him a sketch for his birthday, smartly nestled in a frame that Gorgug helped her make, and feels a flutter in her chest at how quickly he hugs her.

Life on Knot was treading water, fighting every second to keep her mouth above choppy waves.

Elmville opened its arms and offered her a safe place to sink.

/

“Whose turn is it to pick this time?”

Ayda wrestles the remote from Kristen’s grip. “Mine, I believe.”

Everyone but Adaine and Gorgug groans.

“Can we _please_ watch something other than a documentary this time?”

“The rules very clearly state that one person is in charge and they are allowed free reign to choose a movie to watch. All of you explained that to me expertly the first time it was my turn.”

“Yeah, but don’t you, like, ever wanna watch something where a bunch of stuff explodes or every five minutes there’s a musical number?” Kristen prompts.

“Are the musical numbers being performed by Fig or her band?”

Kristen props her head on her hand. “We could probably make that happen.”

“Well, I look forward to that. But I’ll keep picking documentaries until then.”

Fig sighs and tugs on Ayda’s fingers. “Babe, you know I love everything you do. But maybe we could skip the documentary just this once?”

“I dunno, I liked that one about bees,” Gorgug offers.

“Thank you, Gorgug.” Ayda squeezes Fig’s hand and turns to face her perfect, wonderful, completely incorrect girlfriend. “I’m afraid I can’t skip this one. It’s about mushrooms—you love mushrooms. I think you’ll enjoy this very much.”

“Oh.”

“We can watch two action movies on my next turn if I’m wrong.”

Fig blushes. “Well, when you put it that way…” She leans down to lay her head on Ayda’s shoulder, dragging a blanket across both of them. “Mushrooms sound great.”

“Amazing. I treasure you.”

The movie is more about dogs than mushrooms, but Ayda catches the rest of her friends laughing and crying in all the right places. She doesn’t think she’ll have to acquiesce to action movies next time, after all.

One by one they fall asleep until Ayda is the only one awake. She lets the credits roll and adjusts the blanket around Fig, eases a pillow under Adaine’s neck and gently pulls the book from where it dangles in her hands, taking care to mark her place. She takes a few deep breaths and looks around the room, wondering if this is what it looked like the night she was thrust into their lives.

As she does every movie night, Ayda closes her eyes and waits for the blinding flash of light to whisk her back to Knot, leaving a poor substitute in her place.

It never comes.

**Author's Note:**

> a few housekeeping notes:
> 
> —songs for each section are, in order: florence + the machine, "all this and heaven too"; the killers, "all these things that i've done"; purity ring, "push pull"; the temper trap, "summer's almost gone"; tegan & sara, "dark come soon"; and fleetwood mac, "landslide" (but no one really needed to be told that one, right?)
> 
> —iiiiiii have gone overboard in every possible way writing/prepping for this fic. there's so much backstory that i wrote that didn't even make it in here (surprising, given how long it is!) so if anyone needs more from this world, i could very easily be persuaded to come back :) to make a small list of things i've done for this fic:
> 
>   * created a runic alphabet for ayda's tattoos
>   * created a homebrew system for ayda to learn/give herself magical tattoos that took up a week of my time and resulted in a 15-page PDF (if anyone wants a copy, hit me up; i'd love to see it playtested)
>   * created a system for medically transitioning in the world of fantasy high, which i'm still working on (i am creating this system for me and my ideals but you better believe i also want it to be accurately researched/planned; there are a few spreadsheets involved) 
>   * created the map and ran the big battle scene as actual combat! i'm so desperate to actually play d&d that i will play with myself if i have to, god damn it
>   * in general i rolled for things when i thought it might add some fun flavor; arthur's teleport to knot happened that way because he rolled _hilariously_ terribly and incurred a mishap
> 

> 
> leave a comment or come yell at me [on tumblr](https://itcameuponamidnightqueer.tumblr.com/) about this universe; it's been my main focus for five months and i am Obsessed
> 
> thank you for reading!


End file.
